The Night of the Mutants
by Lady MarchHare
Summary: PART 3 UP! Wolverine, & a temporally challenged mutant find themselves in trouble in the Wild Wild West. James West finds that mutants & emotions don't mix.
1. Default Chapter

The X-Men & Wild Wild West (the series with Robert Conrad & Ross Martin, NOT THAT BLOODY AWFUL MOVIE) do not belong to me...but Tyme does. I am having fun using her as the go between of the mutant and western world, but this is all for fun and not profit so nobody sue me okay.  
  
This story is best read AFTER reading Tyme's introductory story Wild Tyme  
  
http://www.fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=545975  
  
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Part 1  
  
  
Tyme sanded the wood and didn't look up. She felt the grit of the paper and leaned into her work. The haze of the sun poured in through the window and lit the fine dust created by her. The repetition, the rhythm of the motion...didn't comfort her so much as numb her from day to day. The change in the wood. The pause in motion to feel the wood, still warm from friction and sun...almost alive...turning silky under her care. The resumption of motion. She didn't even look up when she heard the motorcycle pull up and the motion of the sanding reminded her of other things.  
  
She didn't have to hear the excited shouts to know that they were greeting Wolverine, and she leaned over to pull the shop window shut so she could continue to work undisturbed. She refused to look out. She was determined not to be part of the celebration. But almost without her making the decision she extended herself to the happy parade that made it's way past her window.   
  
She felt the emotional presence of each member of the welcoming party. The cool, commanding nature of Scott...watchful...jealous...but confident that nothing was beyond his control. She felt the equally cool and confident Jean Grey who normally wore a mask over her emotions...the wall that a trained telepath wears as a protection, (One that Tyme was still learning), but she could tell that the occasion seemed to warrant a dropping of the shield. She felt the puppy-like giddiness of Rogue who so desperately wanted to touch the man she bore such a crush for...who had saved her. Just as he had saved Tyme. Poor Rogue.   
  
She felt the desert wind that blew Logan's emotions her way. She could feel Wolverine's emotions burn against her with their raw honesty. She could feel the energy. The violence...the need for sensation he had that kept him from having to remember the things he thinks were stolen from him. He was like a walking bonfire. She took a moment to bask in the glow...but she didn't join the happy throng.   
  
She didn't greet him, as she should. She couldn't...she was determined not to. Not to feel. But then she reached out...almost before she could stop herself and she felt the space where emotions should be. She felt the space, which was as solid as a glass box suspended in mid air, and she lowered her head further and worked the sandpaper harder into the wood.  
  
The blank space in the air was Charles Xavier. Her Charlie...no...not HER Charlie. Her Charlie had been buried by hardship, responsibility, grief and a stern, controlled, reasoning goal. Her Charlie had become everyone else's patriarch. He had become Professor X.   
  
And while he had seemed glad to see her again, she had a feeling she was an uncomfortable reminder to him now. A reminder of the past, of a youth he couldn't recapture. Maybe even an embarrassment to him. Perhaps she was even a temptation. And the stoic Professor allowed no distractions to mar his fatherly skin.   
  
He didn't let her dwell on their former relationship. He told her the first night on the flight to the Institute, after she left Logan, that her dream of being with him again was impossible. That she was welcome to stay at the Institute until she felt able to face the world again...but that beyond that, it would be best if they didn't discuss the past.  
  
But what else was she beyond her search for him? She had put her entire stock...her dreams of happiness. Everything she was into finding the love that had kept her alive after her family discovered her mutant abilities.   
  
Not that she liked expressing her abilities. Time hopping wasn't a walk through the park. It had nearly killed her on many occasions...and it was the reason her father had almost killed her when she was 15. It was the reason she was on her own for so many years. It was the reason Charlie and she met when she was 17 and he was 19...and it was the sole reason she kept trying to get back to him over and over until the hopping had worn her down with its increasing futility. Until she couldn't bear to use it for the agony of loneliness it caused when Charlie couldn't be found.  
  
She would never use it again. But her other ability had replaced it in causing her pain. Her empathic abilities had taken on a new strength...and a new life. She had arrived in Logan's arms barely able to withstand the force of his emotions and her's had surprised and hurt him as she had thrown her feelings into his mind like a knife in self defense. It was Logan's strength of will...and his stubborn version of nurturing that kept her from killing herself. Now her empathy was the agony of Charles Xavier shutting her out.  
  
Jean taught her to build walls. She taught her to use her powers. Jean taught her...not Charles. Charles found other places to be. About the only time he had let his walls drop slightly was when he had discovered her carpentry skills and had offered the old chauffeur's garage as a shop and apartment and she'd accepted. She had felt relief trickle over the dam...relief that she would not be under the same roof as him...relief to put some distance between them. She had also felt the hurt when he realized that his relief had leeched through and caused her pain. But she knew he considered her pain a minor thing now...and something she would work through "for her own good".   
  
So she never complained. She never caused trouble. She never bothered anyone. She was just the ghost who fixed doors and cabinets and repaired holes blasted in expensive wood paneling by young mutants learning the ropes. She was as innocuous as a janitor...she contributed...but quietly, and then she retired to her rooms.  
  
Jean, & Rogue expressed some concern for her...tried to draw her out. And Hank McCoy had gloriously commented that she was as pretty a wallflower as he'd ever met. But it didn't even elicit a blush. She had simply tucked her unruly blond curls behind her ears and excused herself and gone back to work on her lathe. She could feel the worry some of them had for her but she really wished they wouldn't bother. Couldn't they see that the best thing to do would be to divorce herself from the emotions that caused her pain? To learn to build her walls, to learn to be alone, and to learn never to fall in love again.  
  
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Wolverine liked the attention though he would never admit to it being anything more then a pain. But Charles Xavier wasn't fooled and he smiled at the burly mutant.   
  
"We are so glad you have returned to us again."  
  
Wolverine looked around and a slight frown creased his brow.   
  
***She's glad you're back too Logan.***  
  
The leather clad man chomped down hard on the cigar he smoked and shot Professor X a quick glance. He hated when the man did that. But he was learning that Xavier usually had a reason when he did and he kept his mouth shut and just kept walking with the group.  
  
***She has been very helpful here. She's learning how to control her empathic abilities.***  
  
Logan heard the pause as almost a physical presence in his mind. "But?" He prompted.  
  
***But...*** Picked up Xavier. ***She has withdrawn from everyone.....because I had to withdraw from her.***  
  
"Geez Louise." Logan hissed. He had had a feeling that Tyme's reunion with her "Charlie" was going to be a sorry one...he had hoped his feeling would be wrong.  
  
***Your instinct was correct my friend.*** The mind voice was somber. ***She had laid so much hope in our brief time together. She is a beautiful person Logan. She was everything a young man could want...then. But she can't seem to cope with the changes in me. She doesn't complain, or try to force contact with me...and she works hard. But she is alone...and she shouldn't be. Even Rogue doesn't cloister herself like Tyme does. I fear she has taken all this personally. She expected me to be the answer in her life and I'm not. Now she has decided to cope by shutting life out. She stays in that garage shop...and practices putting up walls.***  
  
As the party moved up the steps of the Mansion Logan looked back toward the old garage and made a low grunt. Then he turned and followed the small group of X-men inside.  
  
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She didn't really dream much anymore. And sleep came easily when you worked yourself into exhaustion in a single-minded manner to pass the time. So Tyme didn't wake easily when the pebbles made their tinkling, plinking noises against her window. The insistent sound probably registered somewhere in her but she was well able to ignore it. At least she could ignore it until she heard the breaking glass and the muffled curse.  
  
Feeling older then her 22 years she screwed her eyes tight and cursed loudly at the kids she was positive were making a nighttime visit as a prank. She rolled out of her bed and immediately stepped on a piece of broken glass and cursed again painfully. Then throwing up the window she looked out into the moonlit yard while she reached down to fish the shard out of her big toe so she could shove it up the offender's ass.   
  
Her eyes widened slightly just before she prepared to give the miscreant a very painful piece of her mind...and stopped herself. Wolverine stood under her window looking something she had never thought he could look....sheepish.  
  
"Sorry 'bout the rock baby." He grinned. "You're a sound sleeper and I don't know my own strength sometimes."  
  
She was suddenly aware that she looked like hell and she was still scowling from the interruption and the cut on her toe. Not the best welcome home for Logan. She ran her fingers through her loose blond curls and smiled gamely.  
  
"Leave it to you to break up property and cause bodily harm to a girl's toe while playing Romeo."  
  
Logan smiled wolfishly. "Subtlety is my middle name."  
  
She shook her head tiredly. Then straightening slightly she called out. "Come on up...I needed to get up and stop some bleeding anyway."  
  
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How she ended up on the back of Wolverine's motorcycle she'd never understand. No wait, she thought with an inner chuckle. She knew.  
  
The speed. The rush. The memories.  
  
The feel of her arms wrapped around Logan's waist and Logan's confidence that she would follow him out into the night for drinks.   
  
Logan had looked around her untidy apartment and had whistled low. "Girlie, I thought nuns lived in neat little rooms? This is a sty!" He plucked a bra off a broken rotary saw she had been taking apart in the kitchen and smiled. "I like it."  
  
She didn't know whether to laugh or grouch. "Nun?"  
  
Wolverine held the bra up and watched the light play though the material and didn't look at her.  
  
"Ain't it nuns that lock themselves in their rooms and don't talk to no one?"  
  
She grabbed the bra out of his hands and sat down heavily and applied the bandage, she was carrying, to her toe. Charlie...she thought.  
  
"I think you got that confused with a hermit." She grumbled. "And it's wrong. I do my share here. In case you haven't noticed we have kids here who can do a lot of damage to woodwork with a paperwad fight and a few sonic blasts and a fire spike or two. I fix those holes in the walls...replace doors and teach shop. I'm not a hermit...and you know damn sure I'm not a nun."  
  
Logan leered at the confiscated undergarment. "Well...maybe not a nun then. But when was the last time you went out for a drink...cut loose?"  
  
So dressed in a black leather hipsters and a pink mid-rift t-shirt and a matching black leather bomber jacket with fringe she had emerged from her bedroom to see Logan pick up her bra again and hold it out to her. "Sure you won't be needing this?"  
  
She looked down at her tautly stretched shirt with the rainbow butterfly in the center and glanced up at the smiling mutant. "Do you think I need it?"  
  
Wolverine took her hand and pulled her toward the door..."Not on your life baby!"  
  
~~~~~~~  
  
She knew why she was with Wolverine. She had no trouble picking up his emotional desires. And she knew his frustrations. She could see Jean floating around in his mind. She could see fuzzy images of other women...red heads mostly...a young oriental woman. She felt his losses.   
  
She knew she wasn't on his list of people he wanted to fall in THAT kind of love with. And he knew the same thing about her. But they had sought comfort in each other once. They had escaped loneliness in each other's arms and even though she wanted to keep her vow never to love again...her body drew her reasoning to the possibility that comfort didn't have to be complicated with love. She didn't have to love again. Logan understood.  
  
She hugged him tighter and leaned against his back and closed her eyes. He kicked the bike into high and they dove into the night, full steam ahead.  
  
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Logan smiled to himself as they pulled up in front of the Bier Haus Inn. He was glad Tyme had taken him up on the offer. But was he really doing this to help Tyme? He sure hadn't liked the thought that the kid was hiding from life at the Westchester mansion. That's not why he'd called them to come get her. He didn't want to see the girl kill herself...he'd seen too much death and too many good people do stupid things when they were in the grip of despair. Including himself.  
  
If he could get her out. Loosen her up a bit...maybe get her to laugh...then maybe...maybe something.  
  
But what?  
  
Maybe a romp in the sheets? He felt a small stab of guilt. Very small. Why not? It had helped last time. And it didn't do him so bad either, he reminded himself.  
  
He had to admit that while he was glad that the folks there had missed him...(that was new for him) he found the place a bit stuffy, and he found Rogue's crush a bit overwhelming, but sweet, and Jean's presence too distracting. Scott was a good guy...but with his arm always around Jean in a way that suggested he was still wary of Logan's intentions....and he was right. So why was he with Tyme tonight? A substitute? Was that fair to the girl?  
  
He was also surprised by the changes in the girl. She was a stunner...and she hadn't been bad looking as a wind burned hitchhiker...hell...she was even a knockout as a blue lipped frozen corpse.  
  
But now? WOW!  
  
Her messy blond curls hung to her shoulders and were the color of honey and her huge green eyes were sharp as daggers. And...whoof..her body was...well...well worth any guilt he may feel. She was a petite girl. 5'3 or so but gone was the leanness of poverty. Now she was fighting trim. Workouts and the exercise she got as the grounds carpenter had given her a definition that was the rival of the other X-men and the build they received in their Danger room training and in action.   
  
But there were other changes as well. Her control training with Jean had allowed her to wall up her emotions. He hadn't sensed one stray feeling from her since he arrived. He felt something like a spider web's tickle in his mind when she was around...but it seemed to be a result of their initial encounter. A connection connected with the deeper sharing she had given to him while they shared the night. But if she felt it too she didn't say....and he had to wonder if that tether wasn't something that made Xavier uncomfortable too...maybe he couldn't get rid of the connection either.  
  
But it didn't bother Logan...not as much as he thought it should. Maybe that was because of the hard edge she had acquired too. He understood it. And he wanted her to live life but who was he to tell her that her ideas on love were wrong. It hadn't treated him any too good in the past either.  
  
The inside of the pub was dark. Wood that was stained deep with God knows what, but that had a black, smooth beer scented finish. Music thumped loudly in one corner but not loudly enough to cover raucous laughter and talking.  
  
The drunk & the drunker staggered together in a familiar way on the worn wood dance floor. And the smell of Cholesterol loaded greasy food clung to over made up waitresses that dodged pinches and slaps to generous backsides. Logan shook his head...why did places like this attract him?  
  
They found a corner table and sat...Logan, out of habit, sat with his back to the wall and he lit a stogie & signaled a frizzy haired waitress in a stained apron over and ordered them some beers.  
  
Tyme took a long pull off the bottle and made a face. Logan smiled and ducked his head a little. It hadn't occurred to him she might not be a drinker. But she took another drink and looked at the label with a determined look. A definite, "I need to get drunk" look. She was about to lift her elbow again when he touched her arm.   
  
"Go easy kid...we got all night."  
  
She lowered the bottle. Her eyes bore a hole in him. "What are we doing here Logan? Didn't Charlie bother telling you that I've got a job here? I'm the carpenter...I even teach it. I'm busy, productive, I have a roof over my head and I'm fine...."  
  
"And you're 22 and you don't go out, socialize, and act like you have a stick shoved up your ass most of the time." Finished Logan.  
  
"Well, except for the 22 part, it sounds like you." She muttered.  
  
"Yeah, but that's part of the whole mystery that is me Baby!" He leaned his chair back against the wall and grinned. "A long, slow, cultivation of misery and anti-social behavior...it's what makes me the interesting old fart that I am. Besides...you're pouting makes real grouches like me look like wusses!"  
  
Tyme, still looking at her beer (for fear of looking at Logan's face and breaking up), chuckled softly and took another long drink and set her bottle down and pushed it away.  
  
"I don't pout." she said, sticking out her lower lip for emphasis.  
  
Logan righted his chair and stood. The lip was too much. He rounded the table and put out his hand. "Dance." he barked.  
  
She looked at his hand as though she expected him to pop his claws on her for a moment.  
  
"What?"  
  
He leaned in and brushed her cheek with the stubble on his chin as he whispered. "Let's...dance."  
  
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She didn't know what surprised her more. The kiss that Logan planted on her when she stood up or the fact that the crusty, sexy, old mutant could really...really dance.  
  
Surprised or not she did her best not to let him sway her from her carefully cultivated bad mood and failed miserably. The dancing was wonderful and the kiss was better. It was distracting. And maybe if love wasn't in the cards...distractions could be. She could always distract herself...one distraction to the next to keep her going. But can you live a whole life like that?  
  
She didn't care. She danced mind numbingly close to his body, with detours into spins and dips that only a man with lots of mileage under the belt could perfect. Finally exhausted, she laid her head against his chest and allowed him to rock her gently in a slow, slow dance.  
  
She relaxed and as she did her walls lowered slightly. She felt the man approach before Logan felt the tap on his shoulder.   
  
"I'm cuttin' in..." The drunk slurred as he pulled Logan by the shoulder. He was a tall, raw boned brute with a pronounced ridge for a brow and a Redman hat slammed tight on top of his balding head.  
  
"Buzz off Bub!" Logan growled a warning. Tyme felt the drunk's temper spike. He was an angry, bitter man, and the booze made him dangerous. Images associated with violence swirled in Tyme's mind. She even saw herself in his mind. And it terrified her. She pulled away from Logan and raised her walls with a suddenness that made her head ache.   
  
The drunk reached around Logan and grabbed Tyme's wrist and yanked her toward him almost knocking her off her feet. She reacted quickly by kicking out and catching him in the upper thigh with her chunky black sneakers. She cursed when she missed her intended target. The drunk's face turned blotchy with rage and he pulled his hand back to hit her when Wolverine grabbed the downward, flying fist out of the air and squeezed it in his hand.   
  
With a slight twisting motion of his own Wolverine dropped the drunk to his knees and he released Tyme's arm. She stepped back to let him work. She had seen the Wolverine angry before...but she had only heard stories of his fighting technique.   
  
And she opened her mind to his emotions and was overwhelmed. Wolverine lived for this...his distraction. His eyes narrowed like a predator's and his nostrils flared and his teeth were bared in a savage smile. The gun blast in the air by the innkeeper was almost a signal to Wolverine to begin the fight instead of to stop the fight as the old man was obviously hoping. Tyme was almost afraid to touch Wolverine in his berserker state but she grabbed his arm and shouted at him to stop.  
  
Wolverine turned on her with a growl of annoyance, but he recognized her and kicked the drunk backwards and looked at her wrist. "He hurt you kid?"  
  
She shook her head and looked to the innkeeper who was advancing on the group. He was a round, small man with large arms and a square jaw padded with fat. He eyed the situation quickly and pointed a chubby finger in the direction of the drunk as his buddies mumbled and milled and helped their friend off the floor.  
  
"Deke...You and your boys need to git outta here now! I've had enuff of dis crap! Move fast cuz if you don't the cops will move ya!" he bellowed.  
  
The raw boned miscreant shot a smiling Logan a look that chilled Tyme. She was tempted to feel out the drunk's emotions but the images...what she saw in him earlier had scared her. She just wanted him gone.   
  
Once the bar had been cleansed of the stink of Deke, Logan took Tyme in his arms and smiled. Some wise ass had put the song "Bad to the Bone" on the juke box and Logan lifted his head back and gave a pretty convincing howl and dipped Tyme bringing her up slowly with a deep kiss.  
  
"Well..do I know how to show a girl a good time or what?"  
  
She took a deep breath and relaxed in his arms. "You sure know how to remind me why I don't go to bars with strange men."  
  
"I can remind you of why you might leave bars with strange men...." He grinned seductively.  
  
She grinned back. Distractions.  
  
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As they stepped out the bar door it was obvious Logan had not seen the attack coming. The shadow wielding the bat struck him in the back of the head and he went down hard. He tried to get up but the blow still had his ears ringing and he stumbled and fell down the steps and into the gravel parking lot. Blows from the bat rang down on his head over and over and Tyme tried reach him but was halted from behind by a hand around her throat and another on her mouth, garbling her screams. She flung herself backwards and tried to kick but she was being lifted up and carried away from where 4 or 5 men beat Logan with bats & bottles.  
  
She knew immediately that the drunk had her. The harder she struggled the harder he squeezed her throat until her ears buzzed and her vision began to blur and recede. Her walls were hard to maintain like this and when they fell her eyes widened in horror. She wasn't going to come back from this alive. She knew the man would rape and kill her...she could even see where he planned to dump her body later in his filth filled mind. She stared at Logan and she begged him to be all right...to get up.  
  
Hope flared briefly when she saw headlights illuminate the lot and saw a truck on the other end. But her fear mounted when she saw the men with the bats scatter back and stand on the sidelines and laugh as the truck gained speed and barreled down on Wolverine's bloodied form.  
  
She started screaming. But not with her mouth. Her consciousness beginning to fade, she let her rage and terror flood her mind and explode from her. The drunk didn't even have time to react. His head burst from the inside like a ripe melon and he fell away from her and she collapsed to the ground. She didn't even comprehend the nature of what she'd done. She didn't even see the results...the body behind her...or the men who were falling over screaming and grabbing their heads. She was scrambling forward, half on hands and knees half on her own feet. The lights were almost on Logan.   
  
Tyme lurched forward and fell on Logan who groaned weakly. Looking up, her entire vision was filled with bright white light. She did the only thing she could think of.  
  
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James West rubbed his eyes again. Not enough sleep last night...but then again what took the place of sleep was well worth a few yawns in the morning. He thought of the girl with her brown hair fanned over his pillows. She'd smelled of vanilla...nice. He liked a girl who smelled like cake.  
  
Anyway...he would have to remember to send her flowers with a note or something before they left in a few days.  
  
Right now Special Agent James West was doing his best to look alive before going into the constabulary along the bustling San Francisco street to look into a suspicious incident that had occurred in front of the Bank of California a day before they were expected to receive a shipment of new greenbacks from the mint and the gold bullion to back the paper money up. The local law was pretty jumpy with the shipment due soon. For Jim and his friend & colleague Artemus Gordon...this was one of their easier assignments.  
  
The Police Captain was a crusty Irishman named Flannery. With a shock of red hair as burnsides...or sideburns as they were beginning to call them and a big waxed mustache, but not a hair on top of his freckled bald head Flannery cut an interesting figure.  
  
The big policeman led Jim back to the holding cells and pointed to their "suspect".  
  
The man stretched out on the cot looked dead. He was covered in blood; his wild hair was matted with it. But Flannery assured Jim that there wasn't a mark on the guy. He was unconscious, but according to doctors, otherwise unhurt. Jim stepped closer to the bars and looked down at the figure.  
  
The stranger wore blue canvas denim pants like the miners wore and a jacket of brown polished leather, which didn't have buttons he was familiar with. He wore, under the jacket, a shirt of flannel with a black and red check.  
  
Even under the gore and grime Jim could tell this was a well-built man. He had a fighter's build that was the envy of many a professional boxer...and he appeared to have a more then passable handsome face. In a really rough sort of way. Jim could see why the man was as suspicious as his appearance to Flannery's men. He was an intimidating figure even prone and sleeping.  
  
Jim looked at the condition of his clothes and the amount of blood he was covered with.  
  
"Looks like he won the fight." He quipped to Flannery.  
  
"Bub...That's as close to losing as I get."  
  
Jim didn't start. He turned back toward the bars and watched the man swing his legs off the cot and stand, testing each arm and stretching in the manner Jim'd seen when he'd taken his martial arts training many years before. Each movement was compact and controlled and each movement relaxed a certain muscle group. The muscles in the small of Jim's back tensed slightly.   
  
This man was maybe someone to watch after all. He didn't look at Jim or Flannery. He walked to the water basin in the cell and poured out a generous amount and washed his face, neck and hands. Then he poured the rest over his head and washed the blood out of his hair and shook his shaggy head like a great dog and stood. He wasn't a vain man from his scruffy looks, though as he approached the bars he was using the towel, he'd dipped in the water, to try to remove most of the dried blood from his jacket.  
  
He stopped in front of the bars and examined them briefly with a snort of contempt. Jim dismissed Flannery who left with an unsure look, closing the door behind him.  
  
The man's dark eyes slowly rose to lock with the hazel eyes of James West and the man smiled. It was a lupine smile, the edges of his canine teeth even appeared just a little sharper and more pronounced adding to the wolfish image.  
  
"I got a bit of a headache Bub. So if you'll go about letting me out of here and take me to my friend, I'll promise not to mess up the building too much."  
  
Jim straightened and clasped his hands casually behind his back. "If you'll just answer a few questions I'll see what I can do about getting you out of here..."  
  
The man's voice was a low growl. "I don't need no help getting out...I was telling you that if you did it nice like I wouldn't have to make it hard on you. I ain't got no beef with you...I just want to find my friend and get out of here."  
  
Jim ignored the implied threat. "If your friend is the young lady we found you with...then I'm afraid she's not here."   
  
"If you don't tell me where she is you'll be afraid all right." The man's eye's narrowed.   
  
Jim knew...knew...that this man was dangerous. He didn't have to bluff, and his threats were uttered with the assurance of fact. This man truly thought he could take apart anything that stood in his way. And Jim was almost convinced...strange as it seemed, that he could.  
  
Jim raised his head calmly and as gently as possible said what he knew this man didn't want to hear.  
  
"The girl you arrived with is in the hospital."  
  
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Artemus Gordon was led to the private room of the hospital usually reserved for important private patients. A guard outside the room came to attention and saluted which still made Artie nervous for some reason. He did a sloppy facsimile of a return salute and walked through the opened door. He looked at the figure on the bed in the center of the bare, white room. He stepped up to the side of the bed and shook his head. The girl was pale, and small. Her curly blond hair had been washed of the blood that was in it when she arrived. It wasn't hers. But she wasn't without injuries. Artie discreetly moved the collar of the huge nightdress the nurses had but her in, and revealed the marks that were darkening on her slender throat. The girl flinched fitfully in her sleep at the touch and Artie withdrew his hand, letting it pause on her hand with a gentle squeeze.  
  
Artie looked around. He hated hospitals...but he saw more reasons to hate this particular place in which this small girl seemed so alone. Since she and the man had arrived in such a, if Artie was to believe the witnesses, spectacular fashion (a supposed explosion of greenish light and a shower of sparks) in the middle of the street directly in front of the bank, both covered in blood and unconscious, they were being treated as a potential threat. But as Artie flicked the bottom of the blankets up a bit to reveal a tiny ankle sheathed in a cold iron shackle and chained to the rail of the bed he couldn't help but think that this was overkill. He reached back and pulled a stool up and sat next to the bed and tried to imagine what he should do.  
  
He glanced at the bedside table and picked up the neatly folded pile of clothes and examined him. He whistled low under his breath. He looked at the daring leather pants and the strange, and very small, pink shirt and looked at the tags, which bore unfamiliar clothier labels, and back at the girl. She was a very attractive young lady, Artie had to admit, even in this sad condition. And the clothes seemed to indicate that she wasn't too shy about herself. But Artie just looked at her face, with her long lashes fluttering sporadically, and her eyes searching, furtively under closed lids, and wondered how someone as forward seeming as her garments suggested could look so terribly vulnerable.  
  
Then her full lips parted and she gave a long exhale and then a sudden intake of breath that caused Artie to do something he was unaccustomed to. He jumped. Artie looked around nervously and tried to steady his now rapid heartbeat. He sat back down on the stool and leaned in. The girl had started moving her lips and was starting to sweat profusely. Artie tried to get close enough to hear what she whispered, but his nervousness was growing. This didn't feel right. He wouldn't find a sick girl something to be afraid of...and why did his skull itch? His heart sped up and he found his breathing coming in short gasps like the girl's. He didn't understand.  
  
He leaned in closer despite the growing headache he was feeling and his hand held the girl's and he found it hard to release her when he realized that he was squeezing it a bit too hard.   
  
The word she muttered over and over was breathless and mournful. "Wolverine....wolver...wolverine...wolv..."  
  
Artie tried to keep his own voice from quavering as he tried to wake her enough to ask what she meant. The nudging motion he gave her shoulder produced a reaction he never could have anticipated. The girl sat bolt upright and her eyes opened wide. Bright green light poured out of her eyes, bathing the room in an eerie glow as though she were a lantern and she screamed.  
  
"LOGAN!"  
  
Artie's hands flew up to his head and he echoed the prolonged and agonized scream, and he heard, just outside his own terrified pain, the scream spread like a virus until the hospital, every floor, rang with similar cries.  
  
He tried to stumble to his feet but fell twice. Artie was reduced to crawling out the door. Outside he saw others making more or less the same progress as him from the nearest exit. He saw, with blurry horror, one man leap from a window to escape the terror filling his mind. And Artie was aghast by the sudden urge he had to follow him.  
  
The terror had dimensions that couldn't come from him...he saw people and images that he couldn't make sense of. Mostly he saw twin white lights and laughing men who were beating a downed man unmercifully...he felt his throat contract and he knew he was trapped. But he recognized none of it. He was experiencing a profound grief that was more like a hot knife slicing into his brain.... and he knew it was her emotions...he knew she was forcing this pain into their minds.  
  
He was sobbing and stumbling through the final door and he saw others lurching away from the pain filled building as fast as they could while others just sobbed and screamed on the lawn outside.  
  
He had to find Jim....  
  
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"SHE'S WHAT!?" Bellowed the man behind the bars.  
  
"She was unconscious when you two appeared. Barely breathing." Jim was carefully watching the man's reaction to the news. There had been initial suspicion by the local law that the man had somehow caused the woman to be in the condition she was found in, but if he was then he was a better actor then even Artie could ever aspire to be. And that was saying a lot. The man's face passed through stages of genuine disbelief to horror as Jim described how doctors originally found her, then there was a look of dawning and a barely contained rage.  
  
"Unlock the door or I make the lock and you go away." He seethed.  
  
Jim did something the man didn't seem to expect. He moved closer to the bars. The man eyed him with a little more of an appraising glance. The look of being "sized up". And for a strange reason Jim was pleased. Until then the man hadn't seemed to consider Jim at all. Just his present state of incarceration and his displeasure with it. Now the man seemed to be weighing him as an opponent. Jim's hands itched with an almost juvenile anticipation. But he kept his features even. His manner calm.  
  
"Ya got some balls Boyscout, gettin' up in my face. So I'm going to cut you a break...move or lose."  
  
Then the man brought his fist up to where it was level with Jim's eyes and his arm flexed minutely and Jim had to fight the desire to step back.  
  
Three shining metal blades sliced open the man's skin between his knuckles and began to slowly reach up into the sky almost nine inches. The gradual climb of the metal claws escaping the man's skin made it hard for Jim to keep eye contact with him but like a wolf challenging another wolf he knew that losing that eye contact could be fatal.   
  
What was this man....this creature?   
  
"My friend needs my help. If I'm right, she's sick and hurt...and in that condition she can be dangerous to others in a way that you wouldn't understand." The man pointed the claws at Jim. "And you're gonna tell me where she is or I start slicing things."  
  
Jim was aware of the threat to himself and the predatory dance they were performing but when he mentioned the girl being a danger to others he needed clarification. Did this girl have claws like his? What danger?  
  
The answer was immediate.  
  
The door slammed open to the holding cells and Artemus Gordon staggered inside.  
  
Jim could barely recognize his friend. Blood poured from his nose and there was a steady trickle, which oozed from his left ear.  
  
Jim dropped his stoic mask and leapt to Artie's side and lowered him to the ground against the wall near the door.  
  
"Oh my God, Artie! What happened?" Jim pulled a kerchief from his breast pocket and began to clear away blood from the face of his sobbing friend. He could see Artie take deep choking breaths and the sobs became less and less dire, but this was still frightening. Jim had never seen his friend in this kind of state before.  
  
Artie could barely lift his head...gasped his first words.  
  
"The girl...girl...she..she..I don't know how...pain..."  
  
Jim was almost beside himself with curiosity and a growing anger.  
  
"The girl did this?!"  
  
Artie nodded and grabbed Jim's arm. "The whole hospital...she is driving everyone insane...she almost killed me."  
  
Jim wanted to run straight for the disaster in progress, but Artie wouldn't release his arm. He wheeled around just in time to see the wild man behind the bars run at the steel and swing his arm in an arch and slice through the cage with those unnatural claws as though it were butter. Jim stood in front of the advance and tensed his arm in a manner that activated the derringer in his sleeve. The small gun launched into his hand and he made it clear he was ready to use it.  
  
The wild charge stopped and the man looked down at Artie and back at Jim. "I need to help her...don't try to stop me."  
  
"If she's hurting people then she needs to be stopped..." Jim shouted back. It was clear to the man how Jim intended to stop the woman who had nearly killed his friend and the beast in front of him growled.  
  
But it was Artemus who interjected.  
  
"She's scared, hurt...mourning...it's her pain...she can't control...." Then he paused and looked up at the man with a startling recognition spreading on his face.  
  
"Wolverine! LOGAN!" he pointed. "She needs to see him...she thinks he's dead...she thinks she killed him!"  
  
Jim looked at the beast man as the man withdrew his claws with a metallic snicking sound. Jim stared briefly at the wounds between his knuckles as they closed up miraculously behind the sheathing. Then the man gave Jim a hard, look.  
  
"Show me where she is...before more people get hurt. I can stop it. She's an empath. She can feel the emotions of others and send hers...but when she's sick she can lose it...she can accidentally hurt people."  
  
Jim stood his ground but Artie wouldn't be ignored. He pulled on Jim's other arm pleadingly.  
  
"Listen to him Jim..."  
  
Jim looked down into his friend's pain-filled eyes. "Artie...she almost killed you. A rabid dog doesn't mean to hurt anyone either..." The "Wolverine" stepped closer not appearing to care about Jim's gun in the slightest and that did worry Jim a bit.   
  
"Tyme ain't no dog you can shoot down BUB!"  
  
Artie just looked at Jim and said very calmly. "Jim...you don't understand...when you see her you will. Please help her."  
  
James West stared hard at his friend. Even wounded as he was he was defending this girl. He knew his friend was generous to a fault...gallant toward the ladies..but he wasn't stupid. Jim wasn't making any promises...he would do whatever he had to protect lives. But he wanted to know for himself...now.  
  
He nodded to the wild man and turned out the open door and led the way at a dead run.  
  
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Wolverine didn't know why he didn't just shred the guy...but he didn't. Maybe it was because he kinda reminded him of Scott Summers. And while Scott had a big bug up his ass about law and order and justice and crap..he was an ok guy. He was a control freak...but ok...he had Jean, which really annoyed him, but he was still ok.  
  
This guy was no mutant defender of humanity, but he did know how to spot a born fighter when he saw one. Even through the sissified suit of blue, which clung to him like yellow spandex, Wolverine could tell that this man was fighting trim and his stance and control was one of a man who was trained well.   
  
He also knew that this fellow was more then just the local law...he was government law. Which put him on edge.   
  
There was never a GI agent type he had met who didn't have an agenda. Wolverine wanted to stay well clear of whatever that agenda was. If he had to skewer the guy to do it he would. But right now he needed him to find Tyme and to hopefully get back home.  
  
He was well aware from the clothes, the cell and the weapon the government man held that Tyme had done what she had claimed she could do...she'd hopped back in time with them. He knew that she hated it...now, because of the Professor more then ever.   
He didn't remember it happening, but he knew it had to have been something serious that would make her attempt it.   
  
And she had told him that the attempts made her sick for days...that was just with her alone and a backpack. She had never attempted anything more because of the pain. But now she had made it back in time with him as well. She must be in a real world of hurt. He only hoped he could bring her out of it...he hoped the pain and sickness hadn't driven her insane.  
  
He followed the man in blue like a hound, and he had to control the desire to pull ahead of him several times...he simply didn't know his way through the place's side streets like this man. He looked over his shoulders several times and noted with respect that the man called Artie was doing a pretty good job of catching up to them despite the pain he had endured.   
  
Then Wolverine stopped and looked around. He felt his brain itch...he lifted his head and tested the air. He inhaled deeply...sorting through all the scents in this crowded filthy, frontier city. Then he leapt past the agent in blue who had stopped to watch him. The man gave a surprised shout and bolted after him, never building up a substantial lead over the man.   
  
When Wolverine approached the hospital he saw people in varying states of terrible condition, staggering around the perimeter of the grounds. His head was beginning to pound and he could catch glimpses, distorted, torn images. Hard to see, hard to understand but grief-torn and despairing.  
  
He didn't wait for the other two men. He dove through the broken doors of the hospital and started taking stairs three at a time. The waves of pain started buffeting like winds in a storm. The images were becoming clearer. The drunk's plans for her. The image of him being beaten by the men with bats and bottles was disconcerting when seen through her eyes. The all consuming image of the truck bearing down on both of them. The terror. All amplified by her mutant ability and radiating from her as though she were ground zero of a bomb drop. He knew his healing factor helped him in fending off the worst of the physical effects...but it was damn near as debilitating a weapon she possessed as any that the Brotherhood had thrown against them. He could hear footsteps coming up the stairs and part of him was impressed that the blue-suited man could concentrate enough to follow him into the mental holocaust. He felt it had more to do with a pig-headed stubbornness then in any natural ability to resist the pain.  
  
He was calling her name as he exploded into the room where he found her.   
  
There he stopped briefly and stared...and throwing back his head again he roared in rage.  
  
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James West could barely see...his mind was filled with things he couldn't explain. And a terrible, shattering fear. But if Artie was right then this fear wasn't his and he did his best to separate his feelings from the feelings of this stranger and had taken out his Winchester somewhere, halfway, up the stairs and had put away the derringer. This person was clearly a danger. And he knew that Artie's gallantry knew almost no bounds but he couldn't allow this uncontrollable force to continue. She was killing people and he had to stop it. His eyes felt like they were being pushed out of his head and he could barely catch his breath. She had to be stopped...she had to be stopped.  
  
He entered the room as the man Artie called Wolverine had howled angrily and dove for the figure in the center of the room.   
  
The girl was so small and pale...twisted in blankets and sheets she'd been fighting and lying on the floor with one leg in the air, caught and twisted in the shackles keeping her to the bed. Her ankle bleeding where the metal dug into her at the awkward angle.   
  
She was laying on her back with her arms flung out to her sides like a crucifixion with sweat drenched blond hair a tangle around her head.   
  
But her eyes were open and not like any he had ever seen before. He saw no iris or white, or pupils. They were brilliant green lamps of painful light filling his mind with terror.   
  
Jim watched as the man raced toward her and unsheathed those deadly looking knives in his hands with an audible metallic ring and he sliced the air and the shackle chain fell in pieces to the floor. This wild man lifted the girl with as much tenderness as a man could possess and hugged her to him as he lowered her to the bed.  
  
Through his pain Jim could see the man screaming her name just inches from her face. He shook her shoulders and even took back a hand and slapped her face.  
  
"TYME...IT'S LOGAN! TYME...LOOK INSIDE ME! IT'S ME...WE'RE ALIVE! YOU SAVED US! TYME...YOU HAVE TO LOOK AT ME...YOU ARE HURTING PEOPLE WITH YOUR POWER! TYME PLEASE!!!"  
  
Jim couldn't wait any longer...he cocked the revolver and lifted it. This was a matter of life or death.  
  
But the beast man heard the gun lock and he turned and another set of claws emerged from his other hand and he stood with his body blocking the girl and crouched, like a cat tensed to leap on prey. His eyes were feral. Jim expected the battle to commence now.  
  
But just when he expected to have to shoot the clawed menace the pain in his head shut off with a suddenness that made him nauseous. He and the beast staggered for a moment and then he recovered. Jim still held his gun but Artie had arrived and had placed his hand over the barrel and lowered it.   
  
"Jim...it's stopped."  
  
The Wolverine turned back to the girl and they could see her skin looked waxy and taut as her eyes screwed tight shut and she screamed audibly.  
  
She was trying to shut off a flood and they all tensed in case she couldn't and the pain would come crashing back on them more intensely then before.  
  
But it didn't. Instead the girl sighed once and fell unconscious.  
  
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	2. Part 2

They had to get out of there. Artie saw that. People were starting to, bravely, make their way toward the hospital again. The law...the doctors & patients...the curious...the angry.  
  
And the situation was so explosive inside the small room that Artie doubted they would be able to make a logical move.  
  
The man Logan...or Wolverine...Artie wasn't sure if one or the other was a first or last name...held the girl cradled in his arms unconscious. He appeared ready to fight his way past Jim with her. Artie shook the last vestiges of the pain the girl had somehow caused, from his head and interrupted the stalemate.  
  
"Jim...we need time to think all this through, and we can't have these two running around on the streets. Right now the city will be buzzing about what happened here like a fallen hornet's nest and if anyone else makes the connection then it could be dangerous." Then he turned to the stranger. "Your friend is sick...but if she stays here she could be in trouble. I don't want to see anyone get hurt, and it looks like you could do a lot of hurt. But you haven't, you stopped what was happening...and you helped her. And I'm willing to trust that for now."  
  
The man eyed Jim suspiciously and Jim eyed him likewise. But Jim nodded to Artemus and reholstered his gun.  
  
"I'm listening." Jim said with a small smile pulling the corners of his mouth.  
  
"We need to get back to the Wanderer...they can stay at the train until we figure out what's going on and how to fix it." Artie looked pointedly at Wolverine. "Let her recover in peace."  
  
The man shook his mutton-chopped head and grunted. "Where to?"  
  
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Logan didn't like it. He didn't like it for a million reasons and all of them were, as they were introduced, James West.  
  
But what choice did he have? He had no mansion, or modern hospital to take Tyme to. He had no Alpha Flight, or Salem Center to call a haven. This train would have to do...but the only reason he was there was the guy Artie.  
  
The man had taken the initial head blow from Tyme, which was luckily weaker then Logan thought it could have been if she hadn't been so sick from the hop, and he had still kept a cool head about him. He wasn't willing to drop Tyme first and ask questions later.  
  
The guy was a genuine, goddamned, fucking gentleman. And even if Logan wasn't he could sure as hell recognize and respect one when he saw one.  
  
But he also respected the blue boy, James West. But in the way one soldier respected another. He could tell that this man was a fighter. Though Wolverine had no doubt he could beat him in a fight. He could also tell that the guy was no dummy and that was what really made him dangerous.  
  
Logan read the tapping of the man in the other room...no need to let him know all his secrets...such as hypersensitive hearing. The telegram being sent was a request, to a superior officer, to keep them as "their guests" at the train until they decided if they were an actual threat or not. Logan snorted. They still think he's their prisoner? Welllll..he'd play along until Tyme was good to go, then she would do whatever it was she did and they'd be on their own.  
  
In the meantime the Artie guy gave up his own room for Tyme and had made her as comfortable as he could. Then the guy became all business.  
  
The introductions had been tense in the carriage to the station. Logan staring at West, who stared at Tyme, who lay so still. Uncomfortable.   
  
Now.  
  
Logan paced the floor and was stopped only when a drink was pressed into his hand. A large whiskey...straight. Logan nodded, and took it. No need to tell the man that he had sniffed it for any kind of tranquilizer. That wouldn't be polite. He downed it neatly and handed the glass back.  
  
"Got another for me barkeep? It's been a really bad day."  
  
The man chuckled and daubed at his nose again with a wet towel. "Tell me all about it sonny...that's what us bartenders are here for."  
  
Logan took the second drink and sat down.  
  
"Where do I begin?" He looked up and shook his head. "You won't believe me."  
  
The man in blue reentered the room and got a whiskey for himself.  
  
"After what we've seen tonight...I say you should try us."  
  
Logan's eyes narrowed and then he shrugged.  
  
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After hearing the story Jim was ready to go with what this Logan fellow had said. He almost didn't believe it.  
  
But then he had seen too much not to believe it either. He had to say that he'd never seen anything like the clawed man and his headache-inducing friend in his time...so maybe the rest...the time travel part of the tale was correct.  
  
If they were to be believed at least Jim & Artie could stop worrying about the bank delivery. The location of their arrival had been an accident. And if the second-hand information from the big guy was also right then, the man & woman would be able to leave as soon as the girl was okay.  
  
But was she? Jim worried about her being here. If it hadn't been for her protector, and Artie's advocacy, Jim would not have had a problem with ending the siege at the hospital with his gun. He would have felt a moment's regret maybe...but for the greater good, and for the protection of his country he would have done his duty. But as he had sat across from the man with the girl bundled in his arms, as he had watched Artie tend to her cut & bruised ankle earlier, he wondered if he could do what he had to in order to protect the greater good...if the time came.   
  
Then the creak of a door brought his answer. Holding onto the frame of the door she looked very small draped in the borrowed hospital gown.  
  
"Logan?" she whispered hoarsely and a look of happy relief lit her pale face as she stumbled forward and almost fell. Jim caught her around the waist and she looked back at him as though she hadn't noticed anyone, but Logan, in the room before. And Jim felt a terrible guilt; He could see himself having to end her life if her power threatened them. Then her large green eyes grew larger. And they were filled with fear and he knew...he knew, that she had felt that regret and sadness in him too. She could, somehow, see the scene he imagined and her eyes registered the terror of someone standing on the gallows staring at the hangman.  
  
What would she do? According to Logan, she had acted out of fear to save them with her power once. Jim tensed. He was standing and lifting her to her feet, his hands on her slender waist and their eyes fixed on each other.  
  
He could feel something happening...it started as a tickle in his brain...  
  
He pleaded in his mind and hoped she could read his thoughts...he begged her not to make him kill her...not to bear that guilt. He waited for the assault...for her to act in self-defense. She glanced down to see the derringer pressed into her ribs, covered by the angle from her friend's vision...he could tell by the look that passed over her features that she understood that he would do what he had to.  
  
But she didn't stop, though she was trembling in his arms. She proceeded with a boldness he hadn't expected and he suddenly felt something he had never felt before. She didn't attack him or plunge deep into his soul, even though he was almost certain she could. Instead she was giving him a desperate gift. Opening herself to him...so he wouldn't doubt or hurt them. He could tell that this gift cost her. He could feel it as though this was the last thing that she ever wanted to happen...as though she feared doing this almost as much as she feared him hurting her or her friend. And Jim knew that there was no way to for her lie in here...in the heart. And he drew her closer to him, in an instinctive way. She asked nothing in return.  
  
She had taken a breath of all the surface emotions she felt around her. Including his...she seemed to gauge her surroundings from them like a quick look around can tell an agent who in the room might be a danger to them. It was probably as much a survival instinct as a flinch or ducking. But she never dug deeper. She never forced her way inside him.  
  
And then it was over...as gently as a butterfly brushing his hair, she was gone from his mind. And he opened eyes he hadn't realized he'd closed.  
  
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Something had passed between them. In an instant reminiscent of a dance's dip, West had caught the falling Tyme and something had happened. Wolverine could feel it.  
  
And he didn't like it.  
  
A long look passed between the two as Wolverine had stood and helped Tyme to the sofa.  
  
West had broken the gaze and picked up his drink and finished it and went to get another.  
  
He returned with a warmed brandy, which he held out to Tyme and she accepted.   
  
Logan looked at her in askance, but she just shook her head curtly and he let it be. For now. Now Tyme explained a bit more about the temporal gifts she had.  
  
Artemus Gordon leaned forward in rapt attention, and Logan decided he had a lot in common with Hank McCoy. A look at the bookshelf saw Plato vying with Shakespeare, vying with science texts. He imagined that if locked in a room with the furry blue behemoth that the two of them would end up either curing something or writing a play.  
  
After Tyme finished it was Artie who prodded for more details.  
  
"So when you feel better you'll just vanish?" he asked.  
  
"No...it doesn't work like that. It's more mechanical then that. I have to trigger that part of me...and it isn't easy to do. If I did it by accident all the time I'd be dead by now. Even my first time was a deliberate trigger...even though I didn't know it and it took me a week to go over everything I did that day before I realized just how to make it work again."  
  
"But you said that after a time you had to go back...that your time drags you back."  
  
Tyme yawned a little; Logan could tell that the brandy and the events had taken a serious toll.  
  
"After too long in the past I start to become sick...and I can start to feel my time pull on me. Like a rubber band stretched too far. If I don't follow it back I break. But it's me who triggers the return."  
  
Logan could feel her shake slightly. "I tried to stay too long once, in the past, and I almost died."  
  
Then she looked at Logan. "Something different has happened though...I can feel it."  
  
She looked uneasy. "I have never, never been able to take anyone with me. But I did. And something exploded inside me. I feel. like my powers...have...have...grown."  
  
Logan looked down at her. He could see that while she was excited about this...that she was also terrified. She hadn't been very good in controlling her skills in the past. But now what?  
  
"Like how have they grown?" he asked.   
  
"I don't know...but I think...I'm afraid they might be more dangerous now."  
  
She looked past his shoulder and her eyes locked with James West, who looked down into his drink with a solemn frown.  
  
Logan made sure he was heard loud and clear.  
  
"Honey...Mine are more dangerous."  
  
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The tall figure walked around the wrecked hospital room and stooped to pick up the broken shackles. He hadn't cleaned himself up since the incident. Blood was cracking in a line, which extended from nostril to the end of his chin and he looked down at his shirt and smiled.  
  
He had seen the girl through tear-filled eyes and a crashing headache as the government agent had stumbled out of her room. Sitting bolt upright, with the emerald light pouring out of her, her hair flying around her like flames. MAGNIFICENT!  
  
That much power! The girl possessed a weapon...and he wanted it. He wanted it for the greater good, he told himself. He was, after all, a doctor...a scientist...and an Army officer. Why shouldn't he be the one that molds this power...develops it...for the protection of the nation?   
  
He could see her potential...her application, clearly. And after years of frivolous research...after all the years the war robbed from him as he hacked limbs off and tossed them onto piles like firewood, while less deserving researchers and officers were promoted ahead of him...now...NOW...he had this miracle dropped into his lap. He could make many regret their actions...the reports of misconduct...the slanderous suggestion that any of his "experiments" were based on a sadistic appetite rather then pure scientific discovery. He could make them take notice of him...even fear him.   
  
He dropped the chains and looked into the shards of broken mirror near the overturned water basin and inspected himself with a smile. He scratched at the blood on his collar and laughed.  
  
He didn't know where the girl had gone...but he could find out. He knew that the secret service agent had somehow helped trigger her assault...interesting...he could find out more. He had family connections...government friends. And worded correctly, with power whispered in just the right ears...he could get the things he needed.  
  
Straightening his cravat, and defiantly leaving the blood as his badge of merit, he strolled through the devastation leaving aghast stares behind him as he whistled happily.  
  
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James West was amazed by how quickly the girl seemed to recover from not just the incident caused by her empathic powers, but from the cuts to her ankle, and the bruises and marks on her neck which he now knew came from the attack that triggered their escape to here.  
  
Within two days the marks were no more then a slight discoloration. By the third day she was well, and bored, and Jim and Artie had the shipment of greenbacks & gold coming in to supervise. While Artie had no qualms about leaving their "guests" unattended, Jim did.   
  
That morning Artie brought back to the train something Jim hadn't expected to see. A beautiful green dress with cream lace and gold buttons.  
  
"A new look for you Artie?" Jim looked over his shoulder with a grin.  
  
But when Tyme came inside she gave a squeal of delight and threw herself into Artie's arms and kissed him.  
  
Jim frowned and Logan, walking in after Tyme, scowled.  
  
Artie looked at Jim and shrugged. "You don't want them out of your sight? Then we have to take them with us. I suggest a day on the town followed by the exchange then dinner and a show."  
  
Tyme looked back at Artie and kissed him again. Jim didn't know what upset him more.... the fact that Artie decided the day's events without him...or the fact that he was obviously enjoying the affection the girl was heaping on him...or the more aching fact that he hadn't done anything to make her this happy first. He was looking at her joy and the glitter in her luminous green eyes and the way her hair...and hell...the rest of her bounced because of what Artie suggested. And he hated the realization that for the last few days the girl had spent them, she had been unsmiling, sick and scared and he had done little to rectify the situation for fear of what? Getting too close?  
  
Before Jim could veto the idea the girl had scooped up the dress and run into another room to change. When she returned Jim heard the other two men take deep breaths. It was only when he found himself slowly exhaling as well did he know that the vote had been unanimous. She was beautiful.  
  
Jim decided to change into something more appropriate...and he wondered which suit would go better with green on your arm.  
  
It actually took longer to find something that would fit Logan, But Artie managed to pull something together that was comfortable and less bloodstained.  
  
After a shave and some careful grooming....Logan still looked rough.  
  
"What's with his hair?" whispered Jim very faintly to Tyme when no one was looking. Jim counted and waited....  
  
Logan's head rose from where he buttoned the vest he'd taken over and answered. "The chicks dig the hair Bub."  
  
Jim grinned. He would have to watch Logan closely. He had suspected that Logan was hiding some of his talents and this confirmed one.  
  
In the meanwhile Tyme took a moment to behave as any young woman does...she took a final look in the mirror and after Artie once again proclaimed her flawless, to her great delight, he extended his elbow and escorted her, with a wink to Jim, out the door.  
  
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The tour was detailed and would have been subdued but for the enthusiasm of Tyme and Artie. With a bag of warm peanuts and a giggle Artie led them down the pier and pointed to the island in the bay.  
  
"We have a fort out on that rocky island...it's called..."  
  
"Alcatraz!" The girl exclaimed.  
  
"You know it?" Asked Jim.  
  
"Oh yes...when I was 12 we came to San Francisco on vacation and my father took me on the tour of the island." Jim watched her face as she smiled at a memory that hadn't even happened yet.  
  
"But it's not a fort in my time...it became a prison...then it was shut down and became a tourist attraction." She looked a little pale and shook her head.  
  
"Is there something wrong?" Jim asked and he stepped to her side and put out an arm to catch her when she looked ready to faint.  
  
"It's nothing...it's silly. It's just weird to see it looking so...new." She laughed nervously. "Maybe I'm just a little more worn out then I thought." She looked back at the island and then moved from Artie to Jim's arm as if draw there by a magnet.  
  
Jim laid a hand over hers and smiled to Artie with a wink...the man Logan stepped up on the other side of the girl and she extended that arm, looking suddenly at her arm in Jim's arm and disengaging herself with an embarrassed nod and thanks. The burly man nodded smugly to West.  
  
James ignored him. "Let's get to the bank for the transfer...then we'll go to dinner."  
  
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@  
  
Jim should have guessed. After all, nothing else had gone as expected this week, so why start now?  
  
The explosion took place while they talked about the guard arrangements with Flannery about half a block away, but the dust and debris still flew out to greet them as the front of the bank was blown out. Jim turned to Logan. "Stay here!" And he and Artie ran toward the disaster in a dead run.  
  
Out of the rubble and flame and smoke a group of eight men with guns blazing ran out of the building with bags, heavy with the gold bars they'd stolen. Throwing them onto a wagon they took advantage of the explosion, and the gunfire and mounting casualties to make their escape.  
  
It was a simple strong-arm job but it was proving effective by sheer numbers and the continued use of dynamite by 2 of the men.  
  
James drew his gun and attempted to draw their fire while Artie set up a few surprises of his own. The flash of red smoke gave Jim & Artie enough cover to reach the stairs of the building. Artie went to the left to stop the wagon from leaving, and Jim took cover behind a fallen column and continued the gun battle. The man who jumped him from behind did so under the remaining cover of Artie's smoke bomb but that didn't bother Jim too much. His gun was knocked from his hands. He reached behind himself and threw the man on his back. The man stood and charged, but Jim almost casually brought his elbow into the man's back and tipped him with his own momentum until he crashed headlong into the column.  
  
Jim looked up and saw Artie cutting the tack of the horses hitched to the wagon and he saw that Artie had been spotted. One of the bandits leveled a gun at his friend and Jim was weaponless, and too far away. He shouted. Just as Artie turned and looked up. The bandit gave a horrified cry, and there was a roar and Wolverine, with claws extended, simultaneously knocked the man off his feet and disarmed him...by removing his arm at the elbow. The man balled up around his severed arm and screamed.  
  
Just as Artie ran up the steps of the bank Wolverine greeted him with a savage smile.  
  
"Now we're talking! Great tour Bub...beats the opera any damned day!" Then he elbowed Artemus Gordon, genially. Wolverine stepped over the arm still holding the gun that lay on the ground at his feet. "Let's have fun."  
  
There was a crackle and Artie and Wolverine were thrown backwards by a dynamite blast that sent granite flying in their direction. Artie, who was behind Logan, wasn't hit by the sharp stone, but his brutal human sheild was deeply gouged and cut. As Jim tried not to stare, it was once more evident that Wolverine's healing ability made him a dangerous enemy...and right now, a valuable ally.   
  
Jim saw one of the men with the dynamite sticks laugh as he prepared another one. He shouted for Wolverine and Artie to make for cover and then he saw Tyme step out of the smoke like a vision. Her styled, curling blond hair was flying away from her messily...like the angry snakes of a gorgon. She had her arms raised in front of her. As though she were both reaching out and pointing to the man with the TNT. The man looked at her and his laughing stopped. He stood with a lit fuse and stared down at her. He reached back as though he had decided to throw the explosive in her direction when he froze.  
  
Tyme's eyes were glowing. Jim was stunned. He looked around for his gun but couldn't see where it had fallen to. He looked to where Artie watched with dread. If her power erupted again, then they all might be killed.   
  
Even Wolverine looked uncertain. But Tyme looked serious, not out of control. She appeared to be concentrating and even though her eyes glowed brighter and brighter, lighting the air around her they couldn't feel the pressure that the felt all around them the day she arrived.  
  
Then the man with the TNT screamed and began jumping up and down frantically swatting at himself and crying.   
  
"Pull out the fuse and I'll make them go away!" said Tyme with a chilling calm.  
  
The man did exactly as he was told and defused the stick throwing aside the burning wick and holding the TNT in front of him like a child displaying a cleaned plate to his mother.  
  
"Here! HERE!" The man had tears rolling down his face and Jim noticed that the remaining bandits were all paused and standing in a wide circle around their friend when fear took control and they attempted, in almost a united decision, to run in different directions with their ill-gotten booty forgotten.  
  
Tyme pointed at the man she had focused on and told him to sit on the ground and be still. The man's sobbing became less fearful, and more sad and depressed. He complied.  
  
Jim and Artie, with the persuasive help of Wolverine, gathered the rest.  
  
The glow died in Tyme's eyes as the bandit leader was disarmed of his bag of explosives by James.  
  
Luckily the smoke and explosions had driven most bystanders from the area in fear of their lives. Jim would have to trust that no one would believe the stories of any stragglers who saw more. He was left to secure the area as Artie took their guests away as quietly as possible.  
  
When the gold had been secured and the thieves all bound away, Jim went in search of Tyme.  
  
He found her with Artie at the restaurant they had agreed to meet at. Wolverine sat close to her, his hand lay protectively on the back of her chair.  
  
Jim sat at the empty seat left for him and leaned across the table.  
  
"What just happened? What the Hell just happened?!"  
  
"That's what we're still trying to find out, pretty boy, so ease up." growled Logan.  
  
Artie was more calm though his first brush with her powers had made him more wary of this new development.  
  
"Tyme?" he asked softly.  
  
She shook her head slowly with a look of wonder brightening her, now human, green eyes.  
  
"I think...I know...my powers have changed. Oh My God!" She exclaimed breathlessly. "Did you see what I did?"  
  
"Yes...we saw." Jim said with an edge of urgency. "But we don't understand. What was it you did to that man?"  
  
Tyme looked at him with wide eyes and nodded at his need for an explanation.   
  
"I saw him getting ready to light that stick and had to help. I reached out to feel his emotions and found that I could go straight into his deepest emotions. I saw images. Scenes. Spiders. He was terrified of spiders. So I pulled that forward." She looked up. "I don't know how but I was able to amplify his fear of spiders. He imagined himself covered in them. He did anything I asked to get rid of them."  
  
"And when he became docile?" Artie asked.  
  
She turned her head to his voice. And shook her head with stunned amazement. "I took the feelings he had for a dog that had died when he was a child and made him so sad he couldn't move."  
  
Wolverine sat back and whistled. "Girl you had me scared you were going to spaz out on us again."  
  
"NO!" she replied with gusto. "No...I felt so calm...it was very quiet...It felt like a dream. And my head doesn't hurt."  
  
"So you've never done anything like that before?" Artie asked.  
  
"Never." she smiled nervously. "All new me. Like instinct. That kind of power is totally new."  
  
She grew distant for a moment and her look saddened. "I wish Charl...Professor X was here to tell me what was happening...what to do."  
  
Jim spoke. "You can control it though?"  
  
She looked worried, she looked lost.  
  
"Chuck will be happy to just get us home in one piece." said Logan with a puff on his newly lit cigar. "You can still do that?"  
  
She looked worried for a moment and Jim watched as she closed her eyes and he knew she was searching inside for something. Then she opened her eyes and sighed with apparent relief. "Yes....but not yet....It's like I've got to build a big charge just for that and the hop here drained me bad."  
  
Artie placed a hand on hers and smiled. "Then let's throw some coal on your furnace and order dinner...we can talk about this later."  
  
Jim wanted to talk about it now, but he smiled and picked up his menu.   
  
Dinner was an interesting affair. With this further reminder of the pair's incredible powers Jim was surprised that Artie had no trouble with his easy banter, and his even easier charm. Though James remained polite he couldn't quite bring himself to embracing this fully.  
  
Perhaps this was the fear they engendered in their own time? The fear Tyme had spoken of with Artie.   
  
He shook his head....as a former Union soldier...son of a staunch abolitionist...he hated to think he may be capable of any bigotry. Or maybe it wasn't bigotry...maybe it was jealousy. It wasn't hard to look at Logan and wish for the power to heal quickly from your injuries. From Tyme's description of the night they arrived, Logan's attackers would have killed a normal man. But there sat the burley man without a scratch.   
  
But maybe it was even more. Jim stole glances throughout dinner at Tyme. How sorrowful, sick and sad she had looked when she came to the train, and how elegant she had looked at the beginning of the day. Innocent. Now...she was alive...vibrant...even confident. She laughed and the hair that had been so neat earlier flew around her like a living thing and Jim was attracted and he couldn't deny it.  
  
More then attracted. And Jim had never been more desirous of a woman...ever. She was affecting him like an opiate. If only he could 'have her' he could then purge her from his system...it was as simple as that, he convinced himself. The desire, for all her unusual talents, for her was the same kind as any other he'd had for a woman...but magnified due to the unusal circumstances. And for James West there was only one cure. He nodded to himself grimly and his rakish grin spread over his face.  
  
After dinner they drank and Artie stood and extended his hand to Tyme and she took it. He led her to the dance floor and the quartet that played for the guests played a breezy tune that swept her giggling into the center of the room.  
  
James watched her and felt Logan watching him.  
  
"I don't need to be a bloody empath to know what's on your mind." The man said low, but without real menace. "She's a good kid West...but she's out of your league."  
  
"But not your's?" asked West with a smile.  
  
"She's outta mine too..." said Logan with an appraising look and a self-deprecating shrug. "But she's not mine...and most of the dames I do fall for are outta my league anyway."  
  
He smiled at West with a grim, toothy savage look. "I'm just warning you...she isn't a freaking dessert on the menu. She deserves better then she's gotten and I would take it, BADLY, if anyone hurt her anymore. Understand?"  
  
Jim smiled and drank his drink with one gulp and stood. Walking past Logan he patted him on the shoulder.  
  
"Thanks for the advice..." Jim didn't look back at the deepening scowl and the dangerously flexed muscles. He chuckled as he walked away with his back to Logan. "...Bub."  
  
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Tyme saw him approach as she opened her eyes when Artemus Gordon spun her around. She liked Artemus. He was sweet...funny...daring. He also went out of his way to make her comfortable despite the royal headache she gave him at their first meeting. And while she felt a healthy bit of male attraction towards her she was delighted that he didn't seem inclined to pursue her further in that regard. He seemed to just want to be her friend.  
  
And while she and Logan were also friends...even they hadn't managed to leave it at just a platonic level.  
  
But now came trouble. From their first encounter James West had made her nervous. His surface emotions had her confused. He was suspicious, cautious, and at times even fearful of what she was...and it hurt. But he was also attracted to her in a way that scalded her to touch. He was not a mutant berserker like Wolverine, but his passions were at least as wild as any that Logan summoned for Jean. And as conflicted. Almost as though he hated her...or himself for feeling the way he did. She had done all she could to avoid him. How she had ended arm & arm with him earlier she didn't understand. His emotions gave off ripples that battered her walls relentlessly. It exhausted her to be too near him.  
  
Yet here he approached her. Smiling. The predator in his eyes. A tap on Artie's shoulder and she had been handed into his arms for the next dance.   
  
He wasn't a particularly tall man...5'9..5'9.5 maybe...but he was no weakling. His hands were larger then average and firm as he drew her hard against his body in a way that she could feel the fit musculature she had glimpsed in passing on the train in the last couple of days. She tried not to look in his eyes...and she was suddenly aware that she wasn't smiling anymore. She was nervous...she was...scared.  
  
Her eyes flicked to his and stopped. His hazel gaze was examining her in minute detail...anticipatory. And when she locked eyes with him he smiled in a way that was more then friendly. She swallowed and felt herself try to draw back but he held her tight. She didn't resist.  
  
She had refused to go deeper then surface feelings with Artemus..or Jim. She didn't want to invade. And with James West she was afraid to know.  
  
Today had been different. She had never...ever...deliberately used her power as a weapon. But she didn't want anyone hurt...not even the bad guy...and she'd done it. Safely and in a controlled way. In the past she had hurt people while reacting out of pain, sickness or fear, but that was because she was untrained, and until now...underdeveloped. Now she felt possibilities in her that both frightened and elated her. And she wondered if her previous training would be enough to control the powers she held.   
  
Now...when she returned with Logan she might be a real benefit to the X-Men...not a burden to Charlie. Now...now she also knew what it was to have a power that could be a temptation to abuse...to reach deeper into a soul then she ever could before...without permission. She could easily reach into James West..deconstruct every motivation...examine every feeling...scientifically, minutely scrutinize every emotion he exhibited towards her. She had to re-evaluate how you ethically use that kind of power and all she knew was that she didn't want to deteriorate into an emotional rapist. It was that kind of power that terrified her.   
  
He terrified her.  
  
He leaned in to her ear, his lips soft and warm, tickling her.  
  
"What would I have to do to win a kiss from you?" He pulled back slightly and smiled, his dimples deepening, as he watched her reaction. The game he played with her, even as her body ached in his arms.  
  
She lifted her chin boldly. No games.  
  
"Let me look into your soul." She said calmly, feeling anything but calm.  
  
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They were called mutants in their time. And Artie had to think that such a name that, by definition, spoke of aberration and abnormality, didn't particularly sound complimentary and it made him uncomfortable to refer to them, especially a young lady as a "mutant".  
  
Logan's mutation appeared to be his frightening claws, and a healing ability that made Tyme's accelerated healing pale by comparison. The man had even allowed him an up close look as he extended those amazing appendages. They actually sliced open his skin to escape and push outward, and upon retracting, with a disturbing metallic scraping sound, the skin immediately sealed and healed, without so much as a scar.  
  
Artie was strangely honored by Logan's trust in telling him the things he did. He had a feeling Logan and trust didn't occupy the same territory sometimes.  
  
He knew that the man certainly didn't trust Jim. In fact a barely restrained hostility seemed to exist between them and Artie was pretty sure that Jim's interest in Tyme was only part of it. Since the incident at the bank and Jim's dance with the girl the siding outside of the city that they now called home was a prickly place. He had found himself trying to defuse more then a few tense moments at the train when the two circled each other like alpha male wolves ready to battle for pack leadership. This had to be more then just a growing jealousy. From all accounts Tyme wasn't even Logan's girl. Artie hated being in the dark...he needed to know all the angles so he went to someone who would probably know more.  
  
He went to Tyme. And he was surprised to learn that her knowledge of her friend was second hand at best.  
  
"Logan doesn't say much about his past because he can't remember most of it." She sighed heavily. "The talk is that because of his healing ability he may be older then the man who formed the X-Men, Charles Xavier. And he's in his late 60's." Artie heard a hesitation at this name, but she continued. "We just don't know. All we know is that he was experimented on. Like a lab animal. Some government group tried to use him as a weapon I think. Military men looking for a weapon. A super soldier, an assassin. They took him apart and coated his skeleton with a metal that's unbreakable...and he must have felt it all, because he heals so quickly that anesthesia doesn't work well on him. It was torture. So all he remembers is the last few years and the pain."  
  
Artie nodded, but inside he was horrified. Logan had mentioned that mutants weren't exactly loved in their time...but torture? It said a lot about the man if Logan had been able to set aside his pain to help people. Even if it did seem that he did so reluctantly. Fact was he didn't have to do it at all...and trusting someone who worked in government....   
  
"So Jim may be a little too military for his taste?"  
  
The girl looked uncertain. "Yes...I think."  
  
Artie was casual, he thought he was hearing more in people's silences lately then in what they said. "But it could be something more?"  
  
Tyme looked at him with eyes so full of misery that he regretted the question. She had simply gotten up and walked down the track for some time alone. He knew where she was going...it wasn't far.  
  
Jim had taken the precaution of moving the train from the station siding to a siding about 5 miles outside of San Francisco. This siding had a large abandoned barn about half a mile down the track which Jim immediately took advantage of hanging a heavy bag for boxing from the rafters and on whose floor he had laid several of the sawdust stuffed pads he used for cushioning the blows he received after a hard workout. It was also remote enough to allow their guests an area to exercise without drawing too much attention...and as Jim reasoned...it allowed them to exercise their talents without harming anyone.   
  
Artie knew that Tyme's confession to being unsure of her expanded talents had made Jim more nervous then he would admit. It made Artie nervous as well. Because he knew how close Jim had come to killing the girl in the performance of his duty. Like a "rabid dog" as he had described her. Artie saw the way he looked at her now. The way they avoided each other in a polite, but painful way. Something had passed between them on that first night. And again in their dance.  
  
Now his friend faced many dangers. One of which was the distrust of someone as dangerous as Logan...but even that didn't worry Artie as much as the danger Artie feared most for someone like James West.  
  
That his friend was falling in love.   
  
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Jim could have told Artie what was going on if he understood it himself. But he didn't. He looked back at her as she walked away. She didn't look back at him. He was glad they were outside the city. Even though she didn't wear the distracting pink shirt now she now was wearing a light blue shirt of his that was a little too big. And he found that even more distracting. She had rolled the sleeves up and tied the ends in a knot at the top of her black pants. Jim walked toward Artie as the girl retreated toward the barn.  
  
He shook his head and turned to see Artie watching him and he smiled.  
  
"She's beautiful...isn't she?" he commented.  
  
Jim smiled. "Yes."   
  
"But?" added Artie.  
  
Jim looked as innocent as he could. "But...what?"  
  
"Jim Boy...I see a great big "but" hanging over you."  
  
Jim laughed out loud at the wording.  
  
Artie chuckled too. "You know what I meant."  
  
"I know." said Jim. Then he looked around. "Where's Claws?" he dared.  
  
Artie shut his book and set it aside. "He left about an hour ago. He saw deer in the tree-line and decided to spend the day hunting."  
  
James West was always careful about where and how his guns were kept. "I didn't see a hunting rifle missing when I was inside."  
  
"He said he didn't need one." said Artie with a serious look. "Jim...I see it in your eyes. If you go after her both of you are going to be hurt. There is no future in it."  
  
Jim smiled. "But isn't that the kind of lady I like Artie? If I wanted a future I'd have retired my commission and taken up farming with a little woman and a pack of kids."  
  
Artie frowned. "What about her future?" He asked Jim's retreating back softly.  
  
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She took a few experimental jabs at the heavy hanging bag and sighed. She knew her powers had grown, and while she was excited and more then a little frightened by them she was even more frightened by another result of their expansion. They would be here longer then she had ever been anywhere before she could take them away from this place. Away from James West. She hadn't told this to Logan yet...but she should be getting sick again right now and she felt disgustingly healthy. She had held on for three weeks when she had met Charlie, but every moment after the first week had become harder and harder to resist the pull of her time. But now she didn't even feel the first stirrings of that pull. And while she had tried to stay for the sake of love with Charlie, now she just wanted to flee this time before she could fall anymore in love with the agent in blue.  
  
The past couple of days had been an agony for her. In one dance she had confirmed for herself what she had felt would happen the moment he had held her in his arms on their first night there. When she had fallen into his deep hazel eyes and brushed the surface of his emotions and pulled back in fear while wanting to move forward so much that she trembled with the sudden need.  
  
The dance had doomed her. And her newly expanded powers were going to prolong the agony.  
  
She rubbed away an angry tear. She was through with tears. She threw another punch instead.  
  
"You're relaxing your shoulder and your arm is doing the punching...lean into the punch and let your shoulders and body give the punch power."  
  
She jumped and turned. Framed in the light of the open barn door James West stood. His lean, powerful body seemed to glow like he possessed a mutant ability of his own. As he shut the door she could see him looking at her with mild surprise.   
  
"I didn't think I could startle a mind-reader." he smiled.  
  
She turned away and threw an improved punch at the bag. "I'm not a mind-reader....I'm an empath." She turned on him. "I can't hear your thoughts...I can only sense emotion. And only when I want to...I can build walls to keep them out you know."  
  
He walked up to the bag and stopped it's swinging and looked down at her. "And my emotions?"  
  
"Are yours. I don't want them, I don't care." She went to walk away but he grabbed her arm firmly.  
  
"You haven't tried to feel them?"  
  
She looked down at his hand on her arm. "I could." she warned. "I could, now, pull your deepest emotions out of you and wrap you in grief, or fear." She felt her eyes blaze with her warning. She wasn't going to fall in love and she wasn't going to be toyed with.   
  
He released her arm, but didn't step away.   
  
"But I wouldn't." she finished quietly. Looking up as the green haze died in her vision, she smiled ruefully. "If you're worried I'll spill your secrets then don't. I've scanned surface emotions for a long time...as a safety measure. Like walking into a room and using my eyes to see if everyone is smiling or frowning. It is a natural response. But I never go deeper if I can help it, or unless it's welcome."  
  
"You went deeper two days ago. That man with the dynamite..." he continued.  
  
"Might have blown you to kingdom come!" She looked at him with sudden pleading in her eyes and she hated herself for begging for his understanding. "You own a gun. Do you shoot everyone you see because you can?"  
  
He moved closer shaking his head thoughtfully. "Only if I have to kill. And I don't enjoy it."  
  
"I don't enjoy doing it either." she sighed. "Do you know what it's like to have to force yourself into someone's soul and wade around in a sickness to find what you need to stop a disaster? Do you know what its like to feel emotions pressing in on you all the time and having to erect barriers just to stay sane?"  
  
"Like owning a loaded gun...a heavy responsibility." he added.  
  
She closed her eyes and nodded. "Would you have killed me that night?" She asked the question that plagued her.  
  
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He looked at her greener then green eyes and frowned. He believed her when she said she wouldn't dig around inside him...unless she had to, but what was the real use in not being honest with her. After all...he was prepared to do what he had to at the time.  
  
"Yes." he spoke bluntly. Firmly...without any guilt or guile. But he smiled sadly to deaden the impact he hoped.  
  
She nodded. "Because I was a danger...you would have done what you needed to with the weapon at hand."  
  
He nodded. "Yes. I had a greater responsibility."  
  
She looked down again. "Then maybe we aren't so different after all."  
  
"Am I different then Logan?" he asked with a smile.  
  
Her brow furrowed as she weighed that. "Is that a subtle way of asking if we are lovers?" She deduced cannily.   
  
Jim smiled.  
  
She smiled back. "We were...for a night...and if this.." She waved her hands expansively. "Hadn't happened we probably would have slept together again. Does it mean we're lovers? No."  
  
Jim found her casual manner familiar, in the way he looked at intimate contact, and disturbing in a woman.  
  
"Logan saved my life...he's a hero and my friend. We're mutants, and he knows what it's like to be lonely." She turned away and shrugged. "And...you may have noticed...he's very handsome, in rough way."  
  
Jim took her by her arm again and spun her around and pulled her against his chest. Capturing the back of her head he silenced the coming protest with a kiss.  
  
He felt the air around them grow denser, like a storm approaching. Through closed lids he could still see the growing, incensed, green glow of her eyes. He waited for her to strike out at him and wouldn't have blamed her. But while she struggled against him physically, the glow subsided and he opened his eyes enough to see hers now shut tight. Her struggling ceased to be about release but about a need to be closer. She returned the kiss.  
  
Her body pressed against his and the heat of their desire igniting like a bonfire in both of them, he pulled back slightly to look at her.  
  
She looked at him with an anguished gaze. "This is a mistake. I don't know if I can take this all over again. Please...Logan & I will leave, we'll wait for the time I can get us back to our time...but THIS is a mistake...I...I..."  
  
Jim leaned in to kiss her again and she met his lips eagerly and her hands reached up to entwine themselves around his neck and she held on to him as desperately as she wanted to push him away.  
  
He scooped her legs up from under her and carried her to the stall with the new hay.  
  
Snagging a blanket that was draped over the stall's low wall, he dropped it onto the prickly feed grass and looked down at Tyme's face as they discontinued their kiss. She looked around with a startled look on her face, but she didn't resist what was taking place. Jim smiled reassuringly and her trembling abated slightly. Jim pulled back, by her own admission she had been with another man, and he knew that she had been with a man before Logan, yet he knew, without any need for special powers, that she was scared.  
  
"Should I stop now?" he asked softly.  
  
She shook her head with an almost grim resolve. "No...I don't think I could stop what's happening to me by leaving now...as much as I want to." Her eyes glistened and her voice strained to a whisper. "I'll give you what you want...but can you give me what I want?"  
  
He immediately knew what she wanted and as much as his growing need for her made it difficult to refuse her, he shook his head.  
  
"I know you can force it, but I don't think I'm ready for anyone to look at me that closely." He lifted his hand from where it rested on her breast and started to pull away.  
  
She didn't allow him to. "I won't ask again. Just...please....don't leave me. Don't leave me. And she pulled his hand back towards her and unbuttoned the blue shirt she wore and rested it on her naked skin. Her eyes large and pleading. "Don't leave."  
  
Jim looked at her with startled hesitation. She was giving herself to him and asking nothing in return. Why then did her plea sound so much like forever. Don't leave me.  
  
He would sleep with her so he could leave her. He had told Artie as much. Her skin was warm and soft under his fingers and he molded it tenderly, firmly, as she kissed him. He should stop...he should.  
  
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Jim lay next to Tyme watching her sleep. Jim couldn't recall the last time he'd done that with a woman. Watching the rise and fall of her breasts, her hand relaxed across her navel, her hair generously spiked with loose straw. He closed his eyes and shook his head angrily at himself. Artie was right, Tyme was right. This had been a mistake. He thought he could take her, and by making that conquest, purge her from him like a virus. He was wrong and now he didn't know how to make it right. She'd respected his wish not to have his soul searched by her. The only thing she'd asked of him, and he'd refused her and she'd still given herself to him. Jim didn't feel good about it. During their lovemaking she had opened herself to him. With all the despair for their future, with all the heartache this sort of thing had caused her in the past, Jim recalling the brief flashes of a young handsome man and then seeing the sadness of her love for the older man he had become that he had seen in her mind, and she had still risked her heart for him. What could he offer her now? He was ashamed to have her see what was in his heart, and frightened. And James West was frightened of nothing....but love.  
  
He wished again, as she took a deep sighing breath, that he could just do as he always did. Leave. Send a gift, flowers, a pretty bauble after, and from far away. This had been a mistake. He hated himself, the situation, her powers, anything that had made this situation possible...but he couldn't hate her.  
  
"You're here?" she breathed. She opened her huge leaf green eyes and smiled uneasily at him. She seemed surprised. As though fully expecting to be left...and he knew that it wasn't because being an empath that she knew this, but because as a woman she suspected that she would find herself alone when she woke. He had felt it when she'd shared herself with him. The heartfelt sure knowledge that this would end...and she would be alone again. Lonely again. There was nothing permanent in her life, not family, not friends, not love and he had just added to it.  
  
He leaned forward and kissed her.  
  
"Yes...I'm still here."  
  
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They dressed in silence. She had no choice. Her throat was sore with the tears she held back. She smiled, and she kept her eyes averted. She wouldn't cry. She would not. She knew what would happen...she knew...and she still wanted him.  
  
He was so intensely private but she had never made love to a man without being allowed into his heart....and his refusal was sweet poison. She still wanted him even though she knew she could never have him. She still loved him and his poison worked its way through her. When they left there would be nothing left for her inside again. Ever.  
  
She watched him from the corner of her eye as he pulled up trousers over his beautiful legs and behind. She memorized every line of him and committed them to memory. For memory would be all she had left soon enough. She turned her head and coughed, refusing to torture herself.  
  
"I'm sorry." He whispered. He stood behind her she could feel the warmth of him against her back.  
  
"For what?" she asked with a laugh she didn't feel.  
  
"For everything." He slid a hand around her waist and turned her gently to face him.   
  
She smiled. Her eyes were dry. But he wasn't fooled. She could resist seeing into him, but when she made love she couldn't resist letting him see her soul. He knew her now. He read her like a page and she resented him for it.  
  
She wanted to reach for him, to fall into his embrace again, even without that sharing she was used to...she wanted to run...she wanted him to leave...she wanted....wanted...  
  
"Look inside me."  
  
"What?" She felt herself blink. She wasn't breathing, but blinking was a good sign that she was alive and hadn't dreamed what he'd said.  
  
"Look inside me...do whatever it is you do and look inside." He shook his head. "I don't know if you'll like what you see...but I don't know how else to make you understand what is happening to me."  
  
She shook her head and stepped back. He took both her hands and even though they were suddenly cold and shaking he placed them on either side of his face.  
  
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Tyme didn't move. She could feel his heart beating through his temples quickly. He stood within a kiss of her. Beneath his hands, hers shook. She looked into his hazel gaze and nodded.  
  
He knew. He knew that once she did this...that between them everything would be sealed and nothing would be the same.  
  
She closed her eyes.  
  
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Jim's eyes opened wider. There was no painful jarring like the wild lashing she gave everyone on her arrival. It was more like warm water being poured over his mind. He felt his pulse slow as his anxiety decreased.  
  
When a woman would wax poetic about "two hearts beating as one" Jim was the first to roll his eyes...but this...was something, and the only way to even come close to explaining it was with the term Jim found to be romantic, flowery fluff.  
  
Almost embarrassing.  
  
Then there was a shift...not uncomfortable. but still disquieting. He felt her gently lifting and reacting to his emotions...And she held hers out to him at a deeper level then she had before. And nothing was hidden. She felt his decision to use her..to purge himself of her. He felt her motivations, and he was taken aback, violently, feeling the despair that led her attempt suicide in deep snow...and her emotional turmoil when she exchanged love for comfort in Logan's arms.  
  
For all the shame he'd felt at using her...or trying to...he realized that they both had secrets and fears and fragile moments that neither one could speak of...anywhere but here.  
  
He also knew with a certainty that she had never shared herself this deeply with anyone else in her life. Whether that was because her powers weren't as strong before or because what was happening to them was different he didn't know...but he suspected a bit of both.  
  
But like a dandelion blown by a child...once this breath blew over them neither one of them would be the same.  
  
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Artie saw Logan coming out of the hills at a distance. He made no obvious moves but his eyes glanced to the barn down the track and he silently prayed that Jim and the girl would finish their "discussion" soon. He would do his best to stall Logan and he prayed equally hard that he wouldn't have to deal with the Wolverine.  
  
Across Logan's broad shoulders a buck hung limply. Artie knew that the incredible man had taken no gun or bow with him, so it was easy, though frightening, to guess that Logan had actually stalked and killed the deer as a wolf or cougar would. Tooth and claws. Artie had recalled him waxing poetic on his less civil hobbies and apparently those involved the need for prey. He seemed to suggest that it vented aggression he'd otherwise take out on humans. It was hard for Artemus Gordon to believe that there could be a more aggressive version of this man. He hoped Wolverine had taken out A LOT of aggression on that animal.   
  
As Artie prepared his actor's mask and a diversion he observed the approach and he saw the figure on the hillside stop and drop the dead buck.  
  
Uh Oh.  
  
With his head thrown back, his wild hair lifted like the ears of a beast and with a sudden baring of white savage teeth he took a few running steps in the direction of the barn.  
  
Artie stood and waved an arm toward him. "Hey Logan!" He bellowed. "Nice buck there! Bring him down, I'll help you skin him!"  
  
Artie hoped that Jim or Tyme had heard the warning. Wolverine had, and he turned in Artie's direction with a growl and went back and picked up the deer and brought it down the hill the rest of the way and dropped it at Artie's feet.   
  
Blood covered the Wolverine's arms and hands and was splattered on the shirt he wore. Artie was shocked to discover that the corners of his mouth also bore traces. He lifted a finger and jabbed it into Artie's chest, as if to make it penetrate. He stumbled back slightly. "You promised to watch her!"  
  
Artie smiled, and straightened. "I have watched her. But she's a grown woman and I can't make certain decisions for her...and neither can you."  
  
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Wolverine was furious with Artemus Gordon. A sense of betrayal, of being made a fool. Why did he halt then? This man presented no obstacle to getting to James West...why did he halt?  
  
Because Gordon was right, part of him screamed. It wasn't his decision. But Dammit West had been warned to leave her alone, and Tyme knew better...she said so herself.  
  
Was he the only sane creature here? Like being a time refugee mutant with a hard-on for another man's redhead was sane, he chided himself.  
  
Wasn't anything ever going to be easy for him...besides killing?  
  
He glowered at Gordon.  
  
"The girl doesn't need this kinda pain Bub...she doesn't deserve this."  
  
The man sighed and smiled sadly. "I'm not arguing with you there...I hope to God it won't be like that."  
  
But Wolverine had already tuned Artie out. He turned his head and looked down the track with a snarl.  
  
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James West saw Wolverine bearing down on him with a savage gait. More like stalking...the tenseness of the hunter beast just before the muscles explode into a leap that signals it's readiness to kill.  
  
Jim didn't hesitate...he clenched a fist at his side and felt a similar tensing. Wolverine may resemble a beast...but James West refused to look like prey. He sped his pace forgetting Tyme at his side he focused his full attention on what lay ahead.  
  
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Tyme saw it coming. FELT it coming. Like two fronts of a vicious storm moving toward a collision that would leave devastation in its wake she felt the man she knew she loved and the man who had once made love to her and whom she considered a friend commit themselves to a violently primitive display of control. Moreover she knew that while Jim might understand, on some level, that Wolverine would win such a challenge she knew it wasn't in him to back down from it either.   
  
With three long running strides she put herself between the coming train wreck.  
  
"Get the hell away from him Tyme." He growled at her without taking his eyes off of Jim. "Me and boyfriend there need to have a talk."  
  
"Stop it Logan...why are you doing this?" She was mad. "This isn't about me...you don't love me. You love Jean. What is it? Does Jim remind you of Scott? Is it Jim you want to beat up or Scott."  
  
Logan looked at her. "You're crazy...you said it yourself...falling in love on a hop was worse then the hop for you. I'm trying to stop you from hurting yourself again!"  
  
"I don't need saving!" She screamed back. She turned an equally angry face at James West. "I didn't WANT to fall in love with you....you knew that. But I am and I know we're doomed because of it." She looked back at Logan. "BUT...I can make my own mistakes and I can fall in love no matter how stupid it is to do it. The mistake is mine and stop pretending that this has nothing to do with Jean and Scott for you...you could have told me to my face that you thought it would be bad to hook up with Jim...but instead you want to get into a macho pissing contest. This is all about getting to pound Scott for winning...something you can't do at home."  
  
Logan looked ready to protest but she pointed her finger at his nose.  
  
"Don't even think for a second that you can tell me different....I can feel it in the air around you...I know it even if you can't admit it!"  
  
Logan balled a fist and a thunderous rumble welled up in him.  
  
Tyme turned her head slightly and saw James grin at Logan.  
  
"AND YOU!" she roared, "You aren't any better....God, I know that you love me...I do know it...but in order to be sure you had to fuck me to see if you could get me out of your system like I was one of your used up pretty young things." The tears stood in her eyes. "You couldn't admit it was love until you were done. Do you know how that makes me feel? Knowing you were willing to use me and lose me like that?"  
  
Jim's mouth opened and then snapped shut. She knew he was carefully weighing what she said...and knew it was true.  
  
She threw up her arms and closed her eyes. "Beat the crap out of each other if it makes you both feel like men...but don't either of you pretend you're doing me any favors!"  
  
She turned and ran back toward the barn.  
  
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Artemus Gordon moved quickly to occupy the space between the two men that Tyme had just vacated. But then he shrugged and stepped out of their way.  
  
"I hope you're both happy boys. She's right...get it over with." He jogged down the track after the girl.  
  
Artie followed her to the barn leaving the two men squaring off in display of primitive, caveman bravado. As much as Artie loved his best friend he couldn't understand him sometimes. Or maybe he understood him too well. Since the first night they had arrived Jim had been distracted, difficult. And only part of it was the friction that he and Wolverine had generated together. That competitive male animal way of staking territory and defending it even if they didn't particularly want or need it. Unfortunately Tyme had become part of that competition. Part of it was that Jim was a creature of habit and the love of a woman didn't fit into his life as he had designed it. And Jim could be incredibly selfish with his life. Artie loved Jim...but he could also be angry with him. And right now he was royally pissed off at him.  
  
Logan was no better. By all indications, and he didn't know all the particulars, Logan was in love with another woman but because this woman was unavailable he had found the company of other women a substitute for love. It was obvious that Logan cared for Tyme...maybe loved her as a friend...but that was not what she needed and it was selfish of the big mutant muscle man to tell her what her feelings should be.  
  
But as he came up on the barn he was prepared to comfort the heartbroken girl...instead he found himself dodging a flying kick. The girl came out of her spin and looked up in horror.  
  
"Did I hit you Artie?" She asked reaching out her hand.   
  
Artie blinked and felt his head. "Nawww...It's all still attached."  
  
She looked relieved. "Stress management...when I can't take the heat...I beat myself up in the gym."  
  
Artie chuckled. "Jim does the same...." Artie's voice trailed away.  
  
She nodded. "I know."  
  
"So are Dumb and Dumber duking it out in a gruesome spray of testosterone?"  
  
Artie was stumped. "Huh?"  
  
She shook her head and chuckled. "Sorry...the first was a movi...er play...from my time and the second was the scientific term for male hormone. Too much of which leads to aggressive tendencies."  
  
Artie laughed. "In that case...no...not yet anyway."  
  
She smiled but it was a worried look. "Tell Jim to be careful. Wolverine is fast, and mean. A cage fighter. He'll do anything to win and once the fight starts he WILL win."  
  
"Jim is pretty tough himself...he can hold his own." Why Artie felt the need to defend his friend's prowess was beyond him but he did. But the girl's worried, unconvinced expression was disconcerting.  
  
"I know he can...but "his own" aren't mutants with a metal encased skeleton, claws and a healing factor." She sighed.  
  
Artie nodded and hoped that Jim, in a fit of machismo, remembered that too.  
  
Tyme took another leap through the air and rounded a strike high on the hanging bag and then a rabbit fast series of punches. Then she leaned heavily on the bag and Artie noticed she kept her eyes directed away from him in a deliberate way. Artie was no empath, but he knew she was hurting.  
  
"You know Jim loves you don't you?"  
  
Her shoulders shook imperceptibly. "Yes. And I know he doesn't want to."  
  
Damn him, thought Artie. "Tyme...it's hard for Jim to admit loving you...he has neatly avoided that all his life. I would trust that man with my life...but if I had a sister..."  
  
She turned sad eyes to Artie. "It's okay...really. Logan was right. I make the same mistake over and over. I fall for men I can't have." She shrugged. "Part of the whole mutant parcel. Love is a spectacular failure with us. We can make fire, control weather, grow blue fur and walk through walls but when we fall in love then the real disasters take place."  
  
Part of Artie marveled briefly at the description of other mutant powers but he understood...apparently the love lives of mutants mirrored that of secret service agents in an alarming way.  
  
"Well...maybe you just need to find a nicer young fellow..."  
  
She brightened a bit. "Maybe someone like you?"  
  
Artie was cheered by the flattery, and the brief flare of attraction that charged him but he raised his hands and stepped back.  
  
"Noooooo! I'm more dangerous then the both of them together! A thief of hearts...a rake...a cad! Tough as nails..."  
  
"Tough as a buttered muffin." She finished as she stepped toward him in the hug she desperately needed and he suddenly found himself giving.  
  
He snorted. "Yeah, but I'm the kind that has little seeds on top that get stuck in your teeth and hurt a lot. Very dangerous."  
  
She giggled, her face buried in his chest. She made a sniffling noise and he held her closer. "It's going to be all right....you'll see." He whispered. He was surprised to see she was holding her tears back   
  
Slowly her breathing slowed and she relaxed in the embrace and he could feel her emotions surface ever so lightly where she projected them almost without realizing it. This astonished him as much as he was frightened by the potency of her initial awakening. He just held her and allowed her feelings to flow over him like a warm spring. And he felt a moment's pang...it was very easy to fall in love with this girl...poor Jim.   
  
Then there was a break in the flow so sudden it was like the snapping of a twig and Tyme collapsed, dead weight, in his arms. His eyes snapped open and he saw her head fall back her green eyes rolling up into her head, and the retreat of the offending syringe from her neck. As his eyes followed the needle to its source he felt his head explode with the shattering pain of a blow to the back of his skull. He started to fall trying to hold onto Tyme as blurry figures pulled her from his spongy grasp.  
  
Before he fell into darkness he heard a voice, echoing and deep, in his head.  
  
"No...don't kill him. He might be useful." 


	3. Part 3

Left staring at each other with just their mutual distrust and animosity to witness it they both stretched the already uncomfortable silence waiting for the other to break it or make his move. Neither, stubbornly, gave ground, and neither advanced.  
  
"Do you love her?" The growled question broke the stalemate.  
  
James West wasn't about to start baring his heart to a man who could slice it out of his chest.  
  
"Do you?" He shot back.  
  
Logan shook his head. "This ain't about me Bub...Baby Girl was right when she said that I got the hots for another lady. This is about you and Tyme....and about whether you're gonna hurt someone I like. Which, by they way, I usually react badly to."  
  
At that Logan rushed James and as James twisted his body to throw off the momentum of the brute force attack and drop the brute with a karate blow, he was shocked to find Logan shift his momentum at the last second and avoid not only the chop but he also avoided striking Jim entirely. Instead he now stood calmly behind James without looking even slightly out of breath by the sudden move. James turned quickly but kept his face impassive, not allowing Logan to gage his astonishment at his speed and unlikely looking dexterity.  
  
"Last time. Do You Love Her?" As he asked James watched as the tip of one deadly claw extended itself through Logan's skin and the mutant raised his hand to pick his teeth casually.  
  
West's eyes narrowed and he refused to allow the deliberate motion unnerve him. And West knew that this man knew how to bait. To goad a response. To throw an adversary off balance. It was something any classically trained warrior learned. It tested and prodded and revealed chinks that could exploited when the real assault came.  
  
Jim readied a less then satisfactory reply. He too could bait an opponent. But then he saw Logan's attention shift. Dark, hooded eyes left his sly examination of Jim's reactions. Eyes widened...and his shaggy, maned head swiveled, followed by the rest of his body in a total disregard for the rules of combat and care, no battle ready opponent turned his back on his enemy, that Jim knew, immediately, that something was terribly, terribly wrong.  
  
His head pitched back and Jim could hear him breathe deeply through his nostrils and James stepped up to his side and watched him exhale the breath through bared teeth.  
  
"Too many scents...something's wrong." He looked around.  
  
"Who knows we're here?" he demanded.  
  
West looked up and back down the track toward the outline of the city.  
  
Logan scowled then bolted down the track toward the barn Artie had followed Tyme to.  
  
"They ain't alone West!" He shouted back. "They ain't alone by a long shot!"  
  
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Logan had smelled it when the wind shifted and as much as he wanted to knock the boy scout in blue on his tight panted ass, he knew danger when he smelled it. The smell of men, several men, sweating in the heat. The smell of horses...the smell of oiled guns and gunpowder, and another smell he recognized. The antiseptic smell of a medical people. In a barn? Here? Why?  
  
For Tyme!  
  
He ran for the barn. He cursed himself for being a fool for allowing himself to be snuck up on again, like in the bar parking lot with Tyme. He smelled the hurried taint of men who bore a load they wanted to move quickly...and he was more upset that the wind shift brought only residual scent. He knew when he arrived at the barn door that he wouldn't find anyone there.  
  
With a roar he leapt at the barred door and knocked it deep into the building in a splintering explosion.  
  
Behind him he heard West close in. He looked back and out of the corner of his eye he saw West carried a gun and a small portion of Logan's brain registered curiosity as to where this weapon had been hidden. The man was a walking, running, arsenal.  
  
He didn't bother calling out, no one was there, and as he sniffed the air he knew there'd been no struggle. He was amazed that Tyme hadn't felt her abductor's approach and grew angry with himself and West. It was obvious that she had other things on her mind when she ran out on them earlier.  
  
He heard West stepping over the splintered remains of the door and credited him with not calling out. Then his foot hit something and it made a tinkling sound. He looked down and he could feel his hair rise on his back. He stooped and picked up the glass plunger with its sharp primitive needle and examined it.  
  
Then, spinning, he roared once and fell upon James West for the kill.  
  
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Jim managed to turn at the last second as he felt Wolverine's claws tear into his shirt and caress his ribs with three, thin bloody lines. He spun away from him and raised his gun only to watch the barrel fall off in three pieces in the straw. Jim looked up and felt his eyes widen as the creature, the mad mutant, raised himself up and a hungry look transformed his human seeming eyes into the reflective red glow of circling wolf's.   
  
"Where is she West?" He smiled savagely. "Tell me now and it will be quick...where is she now!"  
  
Jim stopped, crouched slightly, puzzling over the question.  
  
"What are you talking about?!" he demanded.  
  
Then something shot past his head and embedded itself in the wall behind his head. Without taking his eyes off Logan he pulled it out and looked at the object.  
  
It was a hypodermic needle and glass plunger. Jim turned it over in his hand and saw the maker mark and knew its owner. His brow creased, he shook his head slightly. He didn't understand.  
  
Acid etched on the side of the glass, giving it a white opaque satin lettering...."U.S.Army".  
  
"Wha...?"  
  
The plunger fell from Jim's hand as Wolverine's body slammed into him and he took a sudden fall backwards watching in stunned horror as deadly metal claws followed his throat toward the ground, ready to sheath themselves in his neck once they both hit.  
  
Just before his back struck, Jim tucked his knee up to his chest and kicked outward striking Wolverine in the chest and tossing him over his head, closing his eyes briefly and lifting his chin back to avoid, by a hair, the claws flying away from his face.  
  
He rolled away from Wolverine and his hand struck and grabbed an old pitchfork lying on the ground next to him. As he scrambled up to his feet the fork came up in his hand. But Wolverine was faster and before Jim set his feet he saw the wild man running at him with claws extended, a berserker's rage blazing through him. Jim tipped the pitchfork in front of him, almost instinctively, and set the handle against the wall of the stall behind him and jumped backward against the wall as Wolverine ran straight into the tines carried by rage and momentum.  
  
The pitchfork's handle snapped and Wolverine's claws struck the wall and embedded themselves for just a moment a hair's breadth from Jim's left shoulder, he heard a cry, a howl, and then heard a metallic scraping as the claws retracted into the mutant's hands and Jim saw him drop to the ground at his feet. The tines of the fork protruding from his back, one had bent awkwardly, perhaps having glanced off one of the brute's metal encased bones, and it had ripped it's way, jaggedly, from his body.  
  
Jim looked down and was torn, with worry about Tyme, and Artie...and with the blood on his hands now that he looked down at the body of Tyme's overprotective friend. Jim looked down at the blood seeping through his shirt as he lowered himself beside the mutant's body and he grabbed the handle where it was splintered and pulled, wincing to himself as the bent tine tore backwards through Logan's frame as it was extracted. Tossing the fork to the side with an angry grunt, he reached down and rolled the man on his back towards him.  
  
Jim looked at the man's closed eyes and slack face and sighed bitterly.  
  
"You stupid, mean, son-of-a-bitch...." he spat angrily.  
  
He lowered his head and closed his eyes to gather his thoughts.  
  
His eyes flew open again as a steel grip encircled his throat and he felt his body being lifted off the floor.  
  
"Nice, fucking, eulogy Agent West!" roared the resurrected mad man, as Jim felt the air leave his lungs with the sudden and violent slamming of his body against the barn wall. "Sweet...simple...summed me up to a tee....I'll try to do the same for you!"  
  
Logan's grip tightened and Jim felt an immediate, pulsing, whooshing sound that he recognized as his blood pushing through constricted arteries and Logan's face pressed in on him. Jim lifted his arms and with all his strength, struck two fisted judo blows to Logan's chest under his arms on either side. Logan made an annoyed grunt and smiled.  
  
That blow should have knocked the wind out of him...made his grip loosen instead Logan just drew closer.   
  
"No more games West...I know you have communicated with your superior officers. What have you told them about us...about her? Was it just part of the game for you West? Something to keep her busy until you could spring the trap? Did Gordon take her someplace?!"  
  
Logan's fist connected with Jim's stomach painfully but Jim held the reaction back enough to make the big man smile at the implied challenge. Then Jim's eyes flicked down. The tips of Logan's claws pricked Jim's taut stomach muscles where the man's fist pressed tight against him.   
  
"I'll spring them West....I swear I will!" He smiled. "That pitchfork stung. Ya think you'll bounce back as fast as me though Bub?"  
  
Jim had no other recourse then to try to reason with him...and no true belief that reasoning with him would work.  
  
"I don't know where she or Artie are Logan." He rasped. "I am just as worried as you are."  
  
The grip tightened.   
  
"Dammit Logan! I love her...I wouldn't let anyone touch her!" Jim felt light headed.   
  
"Yeah right Government Guy....But you love your nation more...DON'T YOU!?" He roared. "Enough to give it a new weapon to tinker with!"  
  
The horror of what Logan implied struck Jim hard. Did his superiors decide on this? Did he somehow make Tyme a target? No...No..he had done something with Tyme and Logan he had never done before. He'd left important information out of his reports. But maybe someone else...maybe someone else was watching them?  
  
"Logan...listen to me...THINK dammit! Jim hissed. "Use that blasted nose of yours...tell me what else you smell."  
  
Logan looked at Jim with disgust...but a curious look passed through his eyes for a moment and he inhaled deeply. His grip loosened slightly.  
  
Jim saw him scowl...his eyes unfocused for just a moment to brief to count.  
  
"What is it?" Jim asked hoarsely.   
  
"Blood."  
  
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Logan stared hard into the preternaturally calm hazel eyes of James West and tried...tried hard...for Tyme's sake, to find something he could trust in them. The smell bothered him though. It didn't make sense with the scenario Logan had written in his mind.   
  
He didn't seem to hear West until he had repeated himself a couple of times...or maybe it was because Logan still had his throat pinned and clawed fist pushed against his abdomen.  
  
"Blood?" He rasped. "Whose Logan? I know you can tell the difference...whose blood? Tyme's?"  
  
Logan looked at the eyes of the man in front of him...hard...soldier eyes. He watched them soften, beyond all control, with worry...maybe fear. Not for himself. Logan had to admire that about West. The man was no wuss. He imagined that normal humans didn't win many knockdowns with this guy.  
  
Logan retracted the claws and felt West relax minutely as his grip loosened slightly. Logan sneered and gripped his throat again and was gratified to see West's eyes register surprise as he was lifted off his feet by the strangle hold.  
  
"If I find out you're screwing with me....with her...I'll have your god-damned guts for garters!"  
  
With that Logan dropped West. West landed in a crouch...a tense, ready, wary, crouch one hand reaching up to his throat as though he could readjust any damage done. But he dropped his hand and stood...removed his damaged shirt and tossed it aside and looked down at the cuts along his belly and looking back at Wolverine.  
  
"This isn't the blood you smell? Is it?"  
  
The tone was hoarse...but calm and conversational. This guy had a cool you couldn't shake...a bit like Cyke. Or could you?  
  
"No...it's Artie's."   
  
James West's eyes widened at this. Logan could see that West had a history with this Gordon. The friendship was deep...and there was anger in his eyes that Logan knew mirrored his.   
  
"Where?"  
  
Logan took his eyes off of West for the first time since the fight began and that was difficult...usually there'd be a lot more blood at the end of one of his rages. That West was still standing was something of a miracle. He kicked at the straw on the barn floor and pointed to the spot.  
  
"There."  
  
West dropped down to the spot turning his back, bravely, to Logan. He touched the small spots that lay there soaking in the dry boards.  
  
"He isn't dead." Declared West standing and wiping the dirt from his hands and walking out the barn door.  
  
Logan was caught off-guard. "How do you know?"  
  
West turned with a finger raised under Logan's nose. A move that could get a finger removed.  
  
"ONE...not enough blood!" He counted off. "I'm sure you know that there'd be more blood. TWO...no body. And since they left the needle they obviously weren't afraid of being caught so if they killed him they'd have left him...so they took him too."  
  
Logan scowled. "THREE....why?"  
  
Jim shook his head. "I don't know."  
  
Then he turned and ran down the track to the Wanderer. "But I plan to find out...NOW!"  
  
Logan was a tough man...he was a hard...a trained man. He considered himself a free agent...a loner. But more and more he understood that when he was on a mission with other men with the same goal...that he became a follower. And he didn't like it one damned bit. He ran after West.  
  
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James West didn't mention again the fight in the barn, though his side burned under the hasty bandage and his throat was sore and bruised. He understood Logan's motivation and as he got evasive and dismissive telegraph after telegraph from Col. Cole's offices and the other connections in government he thought he could shake he began to suspect that Logan may be right about his suspicions.  
  
He slammed a fist down after the latest telegraph called Artie's kidnapping a temporary reassignment and for security reasons they could tell him nothing else. He swept the papers off the desk and knocked over the chair he'd been sitting in. He turned violently and came face to face with a slightly amused looking Logan.  
  
"Sooo...feeling a little let down by your friends in government?" He blew smoke at West from the cigar in his mouth as he spoke. "Welcome to my world Bub."  
  
Jim frowned, turning away abruptly and pulled a map or the area down and began studying it.  
  
"If this was my time...she could be half way around the world by now....at least ya know they're keeping her local."  
  
James let the curiosity about the statement bury itself and just nodded. Many reasons made him positive she was still local.   
  
"They can't keep her drugged forever. And when she wakes she'll be dangerous." Jim thought out loud.  
  
"Unless they have some reason for her not to use her powers..." Logan's voice lowered.  
  
Jim felt a burning grow in his belly that had nothing to do with the fight earlier.  
  
"A reason...like keeping Artie safe." he finished Logan's thought.  
  
Jim shook himself and looked over the map and his eyes narrowed when he reached a certain location on it.  
  
"Where would you go...if you had a dangerous, unpredictable, top secret human weapon and a less then happy, but resourceful and clever secret service agent?" He mused.  
  
Logan thought. "Someplace remote, inaccessible, escape proof. Someplace only I could get into...no one could stumble onto our..." Logan spat the word he feared most out. "Experiments."  
  
Jim's thoughts got darker. Much darker. He could picture the place now...and Tyme's strange reaction upon seeing it. And he knew that what he would do...what he had to do...would put him at odds with his own government. And James West had never...could never be called a traitor. But this...was...different.  
  
He reached up decisively and placed a colored pushpin in the map, and Logan looked in closer.  
  
"An island fort would work...wouldn't it?" Jim looked at the savage, anticipatory smile that crept over Logan's face. He felt the same grim smile pull on the corners of his mouth.  
  
"Alcatraz."  
  
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Artie came to with the smarting sting of medicine being applied to the cut being closed on the back of his head. His eyes opened wider and he felt the urge to shake his head to reconcile the double vision he was experiencing but hands suddenly gripped his head on both sides and held him secure.  
  
"Please don't move yet Mr. Gordon...I'm almost done here." There was a pulling and Artie winced as he felt the telltale thread snap of a suture being cut. "That's fine...all done. Good as new." The voice was low, amused, and sonorous in a way that made the listener...listen.  
  
And the possessor of the voice was just as commanding. A tall, lean man stepped around the chair, that Artie was just starting to realize he was chained to, and stopped and looked down his long, aristocratic nose at the seated, dazed agent. The man stood at about 6'5 and his peppered gray hair was neatly groomed far back off his high forehead creating an almost V-like widow's peak that made his sculpted short gray burnsides frame his face in a way that made his features formidable...commanding...gaunt...and arresting.  
  
He wore under a long white lab coat that came to his knees a suit of severe black, exquisitely tailored. Artie examined the man's hawk like features and stopped his investigations at the man's eyes and felt a coldness creep into his heart.  
  
The man's eyes were so dark that they appeared to be made of coal. but they were cold. Icy. They didn't see Artie...they examined him. And the smile that creased the edges of his thin hard lined mouth did nothing to add warmth to his bearing. In fact the smile and the eyes actually seemed to work together to lower the temperature of the room.  
  
"Are you sure you're quite awake Mr. Gordon?" The voice was amused, mock concern trying to sound genuine...but the actor in Artie could not be fooled.  
  
"Yeah..." he replied slowly as he looked around him carefully, just realizing that he was chained to the chair he sat on. Then he stiffened. They were not alone.  
  
Against the metal plated door stood a US Army soldier...his rifle held attentively. But that hadn't alarmed Artie. Behind the tall, languid man a table stood. A medical examination table. And Tyme lay on it.  
  
It was obvious by the form visible through the thin sheet covering her and the leering gaze of the other soldier who stood at attention, in more ways then one, at the head of the table, that she had been divested of her garments for some kind of perusal. And apparently in front of these men, with no regard given to her dignity! The gentleman in Artie flared at this abuse and his anger grew when he saw Tyme's poor head.  
  
Her long golden curls were gone. Her head was shaved and her bare, knicked and bald pate was graphed and painted like a grid. Mapped, clinically, like he'd seen done to the heads of mental patients at autopsies for learning medicos to try to decipher why their brains functioned as they did in life.   
  
Artie turned his infuriated mind to the man before him.  
  
"What have you done to her!" he shouted, pulling at his bonds with all his strength despite the known reality that they wouldn't break for him.  
  
"Calm yourself Mr. Gordon. No one has harmed the subject. The subject is very valuable to the US Army, and I have been chosen to study it." The man soothed.  
  
"HER...not "it"!" Artie was struck by the dehumanizing effect of the man's manner.   
  
"As you wish Mr. Gordon." The man conceded with a polite nod. "And you...you have been personally selected by me to help us."  
  
Artie was not digesting the information well. Whether that was from the blow or from his shock at Tyme's state or the man's attitude he couldn't tell. "Who the Hell are you?!"  
  
"I apologize. Let me introduce myself." He bowed just a bit at the waist. "Doctor Edmund Hillmont the Third...at your service."  
  
"Pardon me if I don't rise and shake your hand." Artie bitterly mused. "And this place is?"  
  
"With some quick, and influential tinkering...it is the Alcatraz Weapon's Research Center. For now!" The Doctor swept his arms out expansively.  
  
"The WHAT?!"  
  
"Mr. Gordon. You, more then anyone, should be aware of this subject's potential." the man confided eagerly. "You were subject to it's...ummm her...talents first hand. If she were researched properly, trained properly...THINK what a benefit she would be to the security of the nation!"  
  
Artie bristled at what he was hearing but held his tongue.  
  
"This subject could destroy an enemy army with a single thought before any shots were exchanged on the battlefield saving American lives...as a government assassin she could eliminate the head's of state of enemy nations with a blink and read the thoughts of those whom we want to understand better." The man's eyes glittered like light shining off a cockroach's black carapace. The look of lust...not unlike the soldier who still ogled Tyme's frighteningly still form, but this lust was pure power.  
  
"And my role in this?" Artie was curious as to how this man thought he could sell him on any of this.  
  
"Has been left, entirely, up to me." The man drew himself to his full height. "The subject is dangerous. Potentially lethal. You, Mr. Gordon, will be here to calm her, to keep her from using her powers unwisely which would force us to employ more...ummm..persuasive..means of obtaining her cooperation. I'm afraid that if your presence is not enough to restrain her that we may need to use methods of "negative reinforcement" to convince her otherwise."  
  
The man was talking torture and they both knew it. Artemus Gordon remembered what Wolverine had said about living in a world where mutants were feared and hated and he recalled what Tyme had said happened to Logan in that world. And he was coming to the bitter realization that that "world" was his too. He couldn't let Tyme become an experiment, dehumanized to make it easier for the government to ignore her freedom. He couldn't let her become a slave, and for the safety of all he couldn't let her become a weapon.  
  
"I'm not going to help you hurt her." He said. His voice was low...barely contained fury in every syllable.  
"You don't know anything about her...you are making a serious mistake. You don't know what you are doing. And you won't get away with this...I promise you that."  
  
The man's smiling face fell into a sneer. He was a someone who didn't accept criticism well it appeared. He puffed his chest out self-importantly and smiled sourly, one hand reaching back and laying itself on Tyme's stomach possessively. The man saw Artie tense angrily and cocked his head in an amused fashion and he chuckled.  
  
"Mr. Gordon...really...think of the Subject. You are her friend aren't you? Surely you want what is healthiest for her...and you. I know..." he said with a lingering smile as his hand ran a caressing path down Tyme's leg as the doctor opened the door. "I know you want what is going to bring the least amount of discomfort to the situation. You won't be helping to hurt her...you'll be sparing her...and you... a lot of negative experiences."   
  
Artemus Gordon was shaking with fury as the doctor prepared to leave. "She isn't "the subject", she has a name you know."  
  
The doctor paused and looked at Tyme with an frighteningly white and hungry smile. "She has nothing...not even a name...until I give it to her."  
  
And with that the guards followed him out the door and Artie was alone staring helplessly at Tyme and apologizing to her silently for the betrayal he felt over the situation.  
  
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Jim suddenly found his connections drying up. The maps and detailed building plans he could easily get any other time were not available to him now and he repeatedly slammed his fist against walls and desks until it was sore. Logan looked at him and knew that he no longer wore an amused smile but that his face was thoughtful, angry, and a little sad.  
  
"Look Bub..." he said as he stepped up to Jim's side, gazing down at the rough old draft plan of the prison fort they had managed to get a hold of. "I don't know a soul that has ever tried to break into Alcatraz...folks in my time would laugh at the idea for sure. And I've heard of about three men who ever busted out of that hellhole. One drowned. Don't beat yourself up over it."  
  
"You'll do that for me?" Jim snorted bitterly.  
  
There was a rough bark that could have been a laugh. "Yeah...I get the pleasure. But we gotta get her...uhhh...them..outta there first. And we will. And make history at the same time maybe?" He blew a ring of smoke and stepped back. "The only fools to break in...and out...of Alcatraz!"  
  
Jim's imagination was running wild. He wasn't as worried about Artie as much as Tyme. He knew Artie was Tyme's edge in there...if he could stall, or protect or escape he would. But he wasn't prepared for the image of what his own government may do to Tyme to make her cooperate with their demands. He wasn't a fanciful man, but as he looked at Logan from the desk he needed to know. He needed to know.  
  
"Tyme said you were experimented on...by the government."  
  
"Canadian." The big man sniffed. "But if what you want to know is how bad was it...then I'll tell ya that I won't leave that girl in there. Once someone has decided you aren't human enough to be considered...that you're a thing that can be abducted and drugged. Then they are capable of all kinds of things to get you to do what they want." He turned away and looked out the window of the train car. "They made me into an assassin...breaking away from their control almost killed me...but not before they made me a better killer then I already was.""  
  
Jim knew that they wanted to make her a weapon...it would be the only reason to take her like this. He wasn't going to let that happen. Even if it killed him.  
  
"We'll have to swim for it." Jim said. Then he smiled a bit. "Can you swim...I mean...you know? With a metal skeleton and all if I toss you into the bay and you sink like an anchor Tyme will never forgive me."  
  
He had the guilty pleasure of seeing the brute bristle and Jim was pretty sure it was at the suggestion that he could be "tossed"...still. it was reaction. Then he heard the barking laugh again.   
  
"I can swim boy scout."   
  
Jim smiled. "Boy scout?"  
  
"You remind me of a fella back home...by the book...annoying...mission first...straight laced kid. He leads the group I run with sometimes. Pain in the ass."  
  
"Are you his friend?" Jim asked without taking his eyes off the mad man.  
  
Logan's face remained impassive as he chewed the cigar. He turned away...walking towards the door of the train. "Yeah...he's a...friend."  
  
Jim picked up his hat and followed him. Allowing the uncomfortable admission to dissolve as they made their way to the edge of the bay.  
  
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Artie didn't make any objections about the way the guard looked over Tyme's body. He'd tried too and sported what would be an impressive bruise on his jaw. And he couldn't help Tyme if he were dead.  
  
The chains held him tight and he couldn't reach any of his secreted devices like this. It was a waiting game now. But then a strangely familiar tickle entered his mind. It amazed him for a moment how he could find such a new, otherworldly, sensation comforting but he did. And it took all his abilities as an actor not to reveal his delight...or his trepidation.  
  
He was still watching the guard, carefully, when the man's face grew flush and his eyes took on that fixed and lustful look of the criminal deviant. Jim and Artie had run into their kind enough times and seen the evil glowing in their eyes. Artie sat bolt upright. He almost shouted, almost called out to Tyme. To warn her. Then the man's hand raised. Artie growled like Logan, a frustrated helpless warning and the guard laid his rifle across Tyme's belly and pointed it at him and smiled a warning. His other hand tickled the edge of the sheet covering the young woman's breast.   
  
"If you touch them...you'll come away with a stump." Came a stern, whispered warning. The guard's eyes opened wide and Tyme grabbed the rifle laying across her and slammed it up into the startled guard's chin. The man sank to the ground with little sound.  
  
Whipping her legs around Tyme sat up unsteadily, having moved too swiftly. She looked down and let loose with a string of obscenities that shocked Artie as much as it amused him while he delicately pretended not to notice her covering her truly superb breasts with the fallen sheet.   
  
She looked down at the fallen guard. "Pervert!" she muttered testily.  
  
"Someone wake on the wrong side of the examination table today?" Artie smiled, relief giving him a chipper edge.  
  
Tyme looked at him...around him. Through him...blearily and shook her head to bring some kind of clarity. "I'm not Mary Sunshine when I wake up...I need a cup of coffee bad." She looked down at herself and pulled the sheet up higher. "That and clothes." Then reaching up she brushed her head with her hand and began to let go with another string of muttered expletives.   
  
"You kiss people with that mouth young lady?"  
  
She looked at him and stuck out her tongue.  
  
She got off the table gingerly and almost fell as she tried to shake the residual effects of the tranquilizer. She pushed herself up and looked around. Then back at Artie. "Clothes?"  
  
"I saw them over there on that shelf." Artie inclined his head.  
  
He averted his eyes, with some difficulty, while Tyme dressed hastily. Besides her initial outburst she hadn't obsessed much over her new coiffure except as she caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror in passing.   
  
"New look for me.... edgy...daring...God, I look like Professor X!" And she laughed. It wasn't gallows or sad...it was good humored and truly amused laughter.  
  
And Artie thought it was a wonderful thing to hear. Few women, it seemed, weren't vain or fixated on their looks. The fact that she could take such a mean defacing of her womanly charms in stride spoke well of her stamina, priorities and, ultimately, in Jim's choice of her as a lover. How all of that would end was anyone's guess...but Artie had a lot of confidence in her ability to get through it.   
  
"Tyme...If you can reach into the collar of my coat you'll find a pick that can be used to unlock these chains."  
  
Tyme quickly located the pick and set to work on the troublesome locks. "Dammit...I wish Cyclops was here...this would sure go a lot faster if he could just blast the lock open."  
  
Artie recalled the mention of this "X-Man" leader from an earlier discussion and nodded...eye beams that intense would be useful, but Artie would prefer to keep his fingers.  
  
"You're doing fine. There...see. It's open." He smiled at her proudly. He reached up and rubbed her bald pate and smiled apologetically. "I'm sorry I couldn't stop that."  
  
"Hair grows." she shrugged. "It's just funny...feeling the breeze up there." She looked around. "What do we do now?"  
  
Artie saw the guard on the floor move slightly. "First...we tie up your "pervert"...then we try to get out of here."  
  
The gleam in Tyme's eye was unmistakable, the smile...delighted, as she looked at the guard. She might be able to adjust to her new situation and appearance just fine, but the idea of some small revenge was very appealing to her as well. Maybe she and Jim had too much in common. He wasn't sure she had any fighting experience...but he knew she was fit...and she was certainly more then game.  
  
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They stared at the opposite shore. It was daunting...and Logan knew from history...or in this case...the future...that people swimming the San Fran Bay to escape The Rock just didn't make it.   
  
He saw the boyscou...Jim...remove his shirt and do some compact, well-trained stretches. The man was fit. As fit as Logan had ever seen in a homosapien. Or was he? Logan couldn't help noticing that the three lines...the cuts he'd made that bisected the agent's chiseled six-pack appeared to be in a slightly more accelerated stage of healing then a normal human. Not much more...but there was also an odd lack of scars on the man...as though he were immune to them. They may not be dominant in his make up...but Logan would love to see how this guy's genes looked under Hank's microscope.  
  
"So...you never answered the question. Are you in love with her?"  
  
West stopped what he was doing and looked at Logan with a exacerbated glare. "We don't have time for this."  
  
"That's not an answer either."  
  
West came up out of a deep bending stretch, reaching high above him and dropped his arms to his side with a long sigh. His eyes never left his feet.  
  
"Yes." He looked up and stared out across the water. "I love her."  
  
"Then she's gonna be hurt." Logan sighed too. He suddenly didn't want to add to West's plate...he no longer had the urge to be angered by him, or challenged by him. He just wanted to make sure West understood. He was fairly certain that Tyme wouldn't find solace in the kind of comfort they once shared. And Logan wasn't the best in the comfort category. He just wanted West to know.  
  
"I don't want to hurt her." West bundled his clothes into a bag and stood.   
  
"West...she can't stay...and you can't go with her." Logan looked at him steadily. "You would never go with her. You ain't no dummy, you know you couldn't live in our time...you couldn't leave your friend...you couldn't leave what you know. And she knows it. All she'll know, when we get back to our time, is that you'll be bones and dust in some forgotten hole in the ground...and that girl don't need ghosts. You can't give her what she needs."  
  
Logan could tell that West wanted to argue that love was all they needed...or that it would work out, but the words wouldn't form because he knew they weren't true. Instead West waded out into the bay and turned back as Logan entered the water.  
  
"What does she need?" he asked curtly.  
  
"Someone who won't leave. Face it West...even if she could stay, you would end up hurting her there too. You ain't any better at commitment then I am at opera singing. You like the ladies too much Bub...you're a player. And you wouldn't set out trying to hurt her...but you would. She needs a love that will last."  
  
West looked at him for a moment, his handsome face immobile. Then he took a breath and disappeared under the frigid bay waters. Logan shook his head sadly and followed.   
  
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"Let me try something." said Tyme as she stepped up behind Artie, who was prepared to jimmey the lock of the door.   
  
Artie looked at her curiously, but stepped aside. Tyme really didn't mind losing her hair. She was feeling a rush of power running through her, she was feeling potential she'd never known before and she had a situation where she could test it. It reminded her of the danger room exercises she always refused to participate in either due to feeling inadequate or because of the professor's presence. She knew...she really did realize that they were in danger, but part of her was soaring. She wanted to stretch her limits and if it meant losing her hair...so be it.  
  
She smiled nervously and laid her hands on the door. Her eyes grew bright and everything around her took on the green glow, like she was looking at the world through a lit green light bulb. She felt the guards stir. One was feeling bored the other disgruntled. Both were violent men, they didn't fit in with the regular soldiers. She knew they were picked for this "assignment" for that reason. But both could feel the rise of adrenaline, the panic of the feeling that something was wrong and that they would be blamed. When they burst into the room it was almost a comical tripping, Three Stooges like. Artie and she were waiting. Artie grabbed one gun barrel and dragged the bearer forward into his closed fist, and the rifle Tyme wielded like a club brained the second neatly. They joined the tied and gagged first guard, and Artie, armed with a liberated gun and Tyme...armed with powers she wasn't sure of, eased into the halls of their prison fortress.   
  
Artie was fascinated with Tyme's journey of discovery as she found new and interesting ways to incapacitate guards they found along the way, or ways she found to lead them into their reach that allowed Artie to render them insensible. But he also had to admit that he worried about her.   
  
He worried that she may be using their predicament as a way to hide in the moment. It wasn't uncommon. When pain had struck too close to home for him on occasion, Artie had used the action, the adventure, and the rush of sensation to mask the pain. But when it was all over the pain still had to be faced.  
  
He hoped, deep down, that she realized that. And he hoped if she did...that it didn't make her reckless.  
  
Then he heard her gasp and he covered her mouth with a hand and drew her back. Her eyes were glowing but that started to die and she shook his hand from her mouth and looked at him with a frightened, awed, expression.  
  
"What happened?" he asked.  
  
"Pain." she whispered. "That guard, I was trying to plant a fake emotional response when I felt a pain in my stomach like it was burning deep. And then I knew what it was."  
  
"What?" asked Artie alarmed.   
  
"It, he has a medical problem," she whispered. "Ulcers I think...but I could feel it like I had them too." She looked at him with wide eyes. "I never thought I could feel anything but emotional states...perhaps a bit of telepathy. But actually feeling what someone feels physically too?" She trembled. "I wasn't ready for that."  
  
"Frightening?" he asked holding her closer.  
  
She nodded.  
  
"I've been expecting to feel the pull back to my time...that starts as an ache..it takes a while for the pain to get real bad...but I haven't felt it pull on me yet. This pain was sharp...and not connected to me." She looked up at Artie and reached out a shaking hand for his arm for support. "We need to get out of here...now."  
  
"Hold on." Artie smiled. "He's the last guard...that looks like some sort of outer door. Let me take care of him and we'll get out of here and see where we are and how to get back."  
  
He was happy to take the last guard out of commission. He worked well with Jim...as a partner Jim was the physical side of their equation. Artemus Gordon was happy to operate in a more cerebral way. But since their progress to freedom he had allowed Tyme to take that position and he had relegated himself to providing the muscle...and he was plain tired.  
  
Tyme watched him curiously as he produced a small silver ball from the heel of his boot. With a light flick, almost like a child shooting marbles, he struck the toe of the guard who looked down with mild curiosity and bent to retrieve it. The ball exploded in a tiny puff of yellow smoke and Artie covered his mouth with a hankie and saw Tyme cover her mouth in response to his lead. Artie checked the man's pulse quickly and handed his cuffs to Tyme who shackled the man to a pipe while Artie gagged him.  
  
Artie was unsure at this point. He looked at Tyme.   
  
"We need to know what's out there Tyme. Can you feel around, maybe tell me how many we have waiting for us outside."  
  
Her eyes were already glowing greener in response. She placed the palm of both hands against the door and he could almost feel the air shift as she pressed her powers beyond the door. She didn't blink, but her eyes narrowed until the green glow resembled a half opened lantern against the heavy wood door. Then her eyes grew wide and her mouth opened wide. Distress was plain on her face. Terror. She pushed herself away from the door falling backwards with an unmuffled cry.  
  
Looking around wildly she didn't seem to see him for a moment then she found his face and grabbed his collar urgently. "No!" she cried.  
  
"They want me...let me go...I'll go. Please..please stay here. Wait for Jim & Logan. I felt them out there...faintly. They're coming. But the man out there...he LET us get this far. He knew we would! I need to go out to face him...you stay here!"  
  
She was frantic as he shook his head calmly and tried to settle her. She refused to be comforted.  
  
"You don't understand." Her voice lowered, her insistence was as urgent as the need to breathe. "There are too many of them...maybe fifty or more. They are armed, I could feel their readiness, I could feel their grips on the triggers. I can't incapacitate them all...and we would both be killed. All they want is me. If I go you won't get hurt."  
  
Artie pulled her close to him. "Jim would kill me if I let you go out there alone, and Logan would use the rest of me for hair ribbons. And I can't let you go out there..." Artie tried to find the right way to explain the Doctor Hillmont's threats against her. "Tyme...if you don't act the way he wants you to he hinted that he may use torture to get you to cooperate."  
  
She shook her head violently. "I've seen the heart of the man that wants to use me....he isn't threatening me...." She looked at a loss to explain to him what she was trying to say. Instead she grabbed the sides of his temples and slammed into his mind painfully quick...and his eyes opened wide but he didn't see her in front of him.  
  
Artie saw felt the open prison yard yawn out in front of him without opening the door. He could feel, anger, resentment, boredom, curiosity, cruelty and excitement pouring into him from all sides...crushing his mind with genuinely itchy fingers and bloodlust. And he felt the heart of this evil throng...surrounded by men ranging from curious to apathetic to more then a few with difficulties with the ethics of what they were doing, the soul of Hillmont's stood out. It was a proud, cruel, power hungry piece of slime. It was a self-righteous heap of filth, a masquerade that let him believe he worked for a greater good when all he really lusted after was power, whether that power was over life and death on a soldier under his knife or whether it was the callous severing of a leg that could have been saved because he had had a bad sandwich brought to him and he needed to take it out on someone...it didn't matter. Hillmont's goal, for now, was to make Tyme a weapon...if he couldn't control her no one would. And his means of control wasn't torturing her.  
  
Artie saw that it was him that was meant for that sacrificial altar.   
  
When she released his head he sank to his knees and she sank down to face him.  
  
He looked at her, dazed. Part of him wanted to be angry at what she'd done...part of him wanted to hug her. If that was what it was like to be her...to feel that tidal wave...that pressure, day in and out...he had underestimated her strength.  
  
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The rush, the excitement, the feeling of exploration died with what Tyme had felt awaiting them on the other side of the door.   
  
"You need to find another way out. I'll stall them. Jim...I feel him and Logan. They know where we are and they're coming." She steadied her breathing. "He won't hurt his investment...but if you go with me, he will hurt you."  
  
"And you can't disable them?" Artie seemed to overestimate her powers now.  
  
"No. Not all of them...not without seeing them." She paused. "And since they're armed, chances are a gun will blow you into hell before I can get everyone."  
  
"I'm not leaving you."  
  
"Artie..." she smiled. "If you don't leave me I'm going to put you to sleep and shove you in a locked closet. They'll hurt you!"  
  
"I'm not going to leave you." he said earnestly. "You gave me a damned headache, but I know exactly what that bastard wants with you...I can't leave you to face that alone."  
  
She tried to shrug nonchalantly. "He won't be able to use me for long Artie. I'll hop back when the pull gets strong enough."  
  
It didn't fool Artemus Gordon. "You said you can't control what time you hop to, you wouldn't be able to come back for Logan. Tyme...you won't strand him here and you know it. You'll die...you'll wait here too."  
  
"And if I do, I still won't be any good to him dead so problem solved." She grinned.  
  
Artie sighed.  
  
"We can always do a Butch and Sundance." she quipped. Then at his quizzical expression she added. "Outlaw duo, who when outnumbered by many guns, decided to burst through that last door and go out in a blaze of gunfire and glory...sad ending. Made a great movie. Redford was soooo hot."  
  
"Let's not and say we did." Artie smiled back.   
  
Then the decision was taken from them.  
  
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The swim was treacherous, but Jim wasn't about to let his fatigue slow him. He inwardly berated himself for the need to prove himself that he felt around the untiring mutant who plowed, determinedly, through the rough bay wake. Logan's words still stung Jim as he took another stroke toward the island fort. It was an impossible situation and Jim knew he'd made it worse. He would have to say goodbye. This wasn't his choice anymore. He was used to saying goodbye, used to being the person who made that decision first. But this was different. And he knew everything that was inside her...if this was going to be hard on him, he knew it would be worse for her.   
  
Logan was right and Jim hated him for pointing it out. There was no way to fix what had happened...no way to fall out of love...the only thing he could do was hope they all lived through this to find out just how bad "goodbye" would be. Hardly something to look forward to. But with each stroke Jim felt an urgency drawing him nearer. He felt as though a rope in his mind was drawing him to shore...moments of humor and curiosity, power and fear passed through him. Tremors along a spider's web. He swam harder.  
  
His mind seized suddenly, he felt his heart race and he felt the rush of heat that filled him only when he was battling for his life. His strokes stopped and he floundered, the waves, both of pain and anger and fear washed over him from the direction of the island. He lost sight of the dark rock, and of Logan as his head went under the surface. He felt Tyme rein in the emotional outburst as quickly as she could. But he had swallowed water and he couldn't remember for a moment which direction to swim to reach the air.  
  
The grip on his thrashing arm was painful, but it was his pain alone, and for a moment the water flowed faster past him as he felt himself dragged. When his face broke the surface Logan was looking at him with an appraising, almost concerned, gaze.  
  
"I'm taking it they're in trouble?" He asked loudly over the sound of wave and coughing.  
  
Jim tried to nod as he coughed and expelled the water he'd swallowed and he noticed that Logan held his arm and didn't let go.  
  
"You gonna be all right Bub?" The wild man asked.  
  
Jim nodded and pulled his arm away from Logan and extended it outward in a determined stroke. He swam about ten more strokes when he turned his head slightly...not enough to see Logan, but enough to know where he was.  
  
"Thanks."  
  
He didn't need to be an empath to hear the splashing stop for a contemplative moment behind him...then resume again.  
  
They both swam purposefully toward the looming rock that jutted out of the center of the turbulent bay.  
  
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She gasped as her head was pulled back. Her hair was no longer a handle so one of the guards who held her secure had his sweaty hand on her forehead and her head pulled back, hard, against his chest so that she looked up at a neck wrenching angle toward her captors. Her arms were held by two other men but the man who held her head back earned a sharp headache as she amplified and stabbed her discomfort straight into his mind.  
  
The satisfying comfort revenge gave her was interrupted by a cry and a slap to the side of her face.  
  
The green haze she saw the world in abated and she craned her head as best she could to see Artie. He had fought strongly. Several of the guards who stood around him sported bloodied lips and noses. But Artie had been out numbered. They both had. This annoyed Tyme greatly and she couldn't help but think she'd make a piss poor X-Men. The Brotherhood of Mutants...Sentinels...and she couldn't handle a courtyard of humans with stone age weapons. She vowed that if she ever got back she'd work out in the danger room... taking martial arts training and actually being able to use it in a fight were two different things.... she wasn't ready and Artie was in trouble because she couldn't help.  
  
Arties hands were bound now, stretched high over his head and through a metal loop on a pole in the center of the prison courtyard.  
  
The cry had been the deep scratch that oozed blood right between his shoulder blades where the guard had used his knife to cut his shirt. Then the ripping sound as the man tore downward with both hands to reveal Artie's back all the way to his waist.  
  
Her eyes came back center when a hand grabbed her chin and forced her head forward. Her vision flared green but a shocked cry called her eyes back to Artie.  
  
"If you attempt to use your magic on me or the guards your friend will suffer for it."  
  
The voice was deep, sonorous, and calm. She attempted to reach inside the mind behind it to see what she could see and before another cry tore the air to her right and she stopped she knew it was the source of evil she had sensed on the other side of the door. The sick, twisted, sadistic horror. The power hunger...the hunger for more then mortal power. This man held lives in his hands and extinguishing them made him feel omnipotent. He knew medicine but he wasn't a healer...he knew medicine so he could know how to cause pain...not stop it. She drew in a breath and fixed her eyes on a genteel looking monster and felt an almost feral growl rise in her throat. She thought for a millisecond that she might be channeling Wolverine.  
  
"Leave him alone!" she screamed at Dr. Hillmont who held her chin. Lifting her legs she relied on the guards to hold her weight for the second it took to kick outward and launch the bastard backwards about seven feet. She was glad to see he looked startled by this move...she was only sad that she hadn't kicked lower.  
  
Without her empathic abilities she knew she must be projecting the feelings pretty well because as he stood and dusted himself off in silence he made sure not to come within kicking distance again. He raised his long fingered hand and signaled the gorilla of a man who stood with a bullwhip in his hand near Artie. She saw Artie tense as the man drew back his arm and she heard a muffled cry as he bit his lip and then a long shaky exhale.  
  
"When you are ready to listen, and work with us, your friend will be spared further discomfort." Hillmont's brows knitted together with false concern. "I don't wish to harm you or Mr. Gordon..."  
  
She interrupted his with a warning hiss. "You want to know what I can do?"  
  
He nodded gravely.  
  
"Then let's not pretend..." She looked at him her green eyes fixed without breaking away from his. Piercing him. "Here's the first secret.... my power is empathic."  
  
The man's eyes narrowed with interest.  
  
"I can feel every sick, perverted, sad, delusional, sadistic emotion that crawls through what passes for a soul in you." She turned her head and raised her voice. "In all of you!"  
  
She saw a few men back away with self-conscious dread in their eyes. Her smile became predatory. She looked back at the doctor.  
  
"So don't tell me you don't want to hurt anyone!" She grinned. "You and I know you live for it...it makes you feel important! You used to cut off legs and arms that could have been saved, just because you were in a bad mood and making someone else scream relieved your tension!"  
  
Some of the soldiers shifted uncomfortably and a few mumbled under their breaths. The doctor's face grew hard...his lip twisted up in a sneer and she saw the tension fill his body until he shook with rage.  
  
Tyme's pointed stare was shaken by Artie who lifted his head with a rasping laugh.  
  
"Get 'em Tiger!"  
  
The dark, ego bruised doctor signaled the whip man again.  
  
Tyme winced sympathetically.  
  
"What do you want?!"  
  
The tall sanguine looking man stepped forward confidently, daring her with a flick of his eyes toward Artemus Gordon, to defy him...to attack him. He smiled when she didn't.  
  
"I want you...to do whatever I tell you to."  
  
He raised a hand and Tyme feared that he was signaling for the whip again. Instead two guards dragged an emaciated, filthy man dressed in gray rags forward and held him up next to the doctor who indicated the man with a small gesture from his long fingers.  
  
"This man is an army deserter. He ran when Indians overran his fort. He left his friends alone to die and made deals with the savages to save his own hide." His lip curled with distain. "He has been sentenced to hang. He is dead no matter what. So what I want you to do is to use your special powers...and kill him."  
  
The man smiled at her and Tyme didn't have to be empathic to know how much pleasure he was taking from her total revulsion. It was almost sexual...the smile a cruel seduction. Her eyes flared briefly. But enough to make the smile disappear and the doctor step back.  
  
And Artie cried out again.  
  
Tyme looked at the doomed man. He looked up with rheumy eyes, barely comprehending...totally confused. She felt inside her mind. her eyes flared green but no punishment came because her gaze was focused on the condemned man. The man was past caring, past being really afraid of what would happen to him. Tyme felt his hunger rumble in her...felt his apathy. She felt anger for him and disengaged herself and threw a poisoned gaze up at the doctor.  
  
"No."  
  
There was no change in that evil smile. Artie bit off a scream.   
  
She found the cry made her start and she tried to look over toward him but her head was caught between two long fingered hands.  
  
"I don't know how, or why you possess the abilities you do. But I know you can kill with them if you chose to." He hissed down in his face. "And you will kill...for me...on my orders...whenever I order you! You have only two choices. Obey...or watch others suffer for your disobedience!" With that he nodded toward the wielder of the whip who began to beat Artie mercilessly.  
  
She closed her eyes against his agony and pulled her head out of Hillmont's cold hands. The crack of the whip, and the sound of Artemus Gordon trying to spare her the sound of his pain. But it was no good. She lifted her head and her eyes opened with a green beaming shine.  
  
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Artie looked at her as she stepped away from the hands of the guards and up to the dazed prisoner. Her face was grim...unreadable. She gently lifted the man's head and brushed dirty strands from his forehead. Her eyes grew wider...the glow bathed her in emerald light.  
  
"Tyme!" he cried out to her. "Tyme...Don't do it!"  
  
He saw her falter for a second and then he made a choking sound as a filthy rag was shoved and tied into his mouth and another blow sliced across his shoulders. His eyes blurred with pain then refocused on Tyme as she held the man's head and leaned forward and placed her forehead against the prisoner's.  
  
He couldn't believe what was happening. Could she really do it? He thought she could. To save someone she cared for. But he prayed he was wrong. The last thing she needed was this poor man's blood on her hands. He strained and screamed into his gag to get her attention and raged at the look of domineering avarice that was displayed on Hillmont's smug face.  
  
The man in Tyme's hands stiffened suddenly and Artie's pain turned into despair as the man collapsed in his guard's hands. Tyme straightened and her eyes faded to their natural greener then green shade and she sighed and stepped back.  
  
Artie's beating ceased as all stared at the limp body. Hillmont strode forward with a proud gait and knelt slightly and reached for the man's throat for a pulse when a rumbling drone escaped the body. Then another...then another...then another. The dead man was snoring!  
  
Artie grinned in his gag proudly.  
  
Hillmont stood swiftly and rigidly. Whirling on Tyme as the guards tittered. Red to the roots of his dark hair he shook with rage. Tyme smiled at him and hers was the smug visage. Hillmont snapped. Unholstering his service revolver he turned and shot the sleeping man through the top of his bowed head and turned toward Tyme who stood stock-still. Her eyes wide at the spray of gore she had seen.  
  
  
Another man was dragged across the courtyard. The tittering of the guards had fallen silent under the rage of their commanding officer. This man fought hard against his guards. He had seen what Tyme could do and certainly what would happen in any case if she didn't kill him first. His eyes darted desperately around. Pleading eyes to his fellow soldiers. to Artie who wanted to help him but couldn't and to Tyme who still stared at the corpse of the grizzled old prisoner.  
  
Artie was fairly certain this was the first time she had seen death so cruel. She was in shock and only her slow blink seemed to indicate she was even conscious and not some half standing corpse herself. Artie was almost grateful for the guards who kept her from falling and injuring herself.  
  
"We shall try again." threatened Hillmont, a slight rise in his deep voice betraying his still palpable rage. "This man is also condemned. Kill him...and Mr. Gordon goes free. Play games with me and Mr. Gordon suffers and the prisoner dies anyway!"  
  
Artie saw the signal given to the flagellist and he shut his eyes in preparation of the sting of the lash biting into his back and did not see Tyme's reaction. But mingled with his own cry he heard a low moan of despair come from her that was echoed by the struggling prisoner.  
  
The seconds dragged by in waves of agony. He leaned heavily on the pole he as tied to and feeling moisture that was more then sweat on his back and wrists he looked up and saw that his own struggles had caused his wrists to bleed where the ropes burned into them. The time between lashes was short...too short for him to focus his eyes past the pain and see what was happening to Tyme.   
  
All Artie knew was that every lash meant that she was resisting Hillmont's will. Artie was happy for that. But he knew that unless Jim and Wolverine found them...soon...he would have to die to give Tyme her chance to escape. That as long as Hillmont had him to hold over her, that she would not attack him or the guards. And blinded by pain and that reasoning Artie was beginning to hope that it would all be over soon.  
  
Strangely Artie had assumed that after a while the pain would become a numbed wall...that it would level off and he would adjust. But that was wrong. Dust settling in his torn flesh was an agony that nearly drove him insane and he cried around his gag until the spittle drooled down his chin and he prayed for unconsciousness. Then the blows stopped briefly and he looked up and saw Tyme and he shook his head to clear it.  
  
The prisoner struggled and Hillmont leaned in with his revolver in hand to watch. This time the light pouring out of Tyme's eyes filled the twilight dimming courtyard. The look on Tyme's face was conflicted...not the serene, unreadable expression of before. Artie, even through a haze of incredible pain, could see that she was coming to a decision, which frightened her, and Artie leaned his head into the pole and waited in agonized sadness.  
  
Artie felt nothing. He blinked. He, literally, felt nothing. He body was too weak to support his weight, he could feel the warm wetness of blood on his back and arms. He could feel the sweat as it course down his face. But he felt no....pain.  
  
His eyes opened wide at the wonder of it when they focused on Tyme. Her eyes blazing, her mouth opened wide and her body rigid to the point that her back bowed backwards. And she screamed. She screamed and yanked her contorting body from the guards reach and stumbled forward and fell at Artie's feet. Artie saw her body arch and draw itself into a fetal position again and again and her teeth were clenched tight and a high wheezing screech came from her like a demon escaping hell.   
  
Artie wanted to scream her name...he wanted to reach down to her and shake her.  
  
Hillmont gave her two choices. Kill at his command, or watch Artie suffer. But, Dammit, Tyme came up with a third choice that shocked Artie with its audacity...and bravery. And he wished to God he could stop her.  
  
She wasn't going to be forced to kill....and she couldn't save Artie from dying...but she was determined to save him from the pain of dying like this. She was somehow using her powers not just to share his pain...but also to remove it entirely. But apparently the only way to remove it was for her to live it.   
  
The guards milled around in confusion. Hillmont stood back a look of disbelief clouding his lean face. Then he moved forward...he kicked her. Again. Again.  
  
"Stop this!" he demanded. "I command you to stop what you're doing! NOW!" His voice pitched higher and spittle flew from his lips.  
  
He kicked her again and Tyme endured it as she adjusted herself to the waves of pain she stole from Artie. Her eyes were half open and wet, glazed, shining bright. Artie wondered if she even knew what was going on or if she could hear or feel Hillmont through the pain she had taken upon herself. Artie was too weak to lift himself or he would have kicked the bastard for what he was doing.  
  
But God...part of him wanted Tyme to listen to him. To give him back his pain and to wait for Jim...to live for Jim. By now Hillmont was a man possessed...gone was the doctor he pretended he was...gone was the patriot who had convinced people in government that he should have the resources to conduct his mad project. Gone was the project. Replacing all of it was a mad man...a power hungry sadist who had been cheated...outwitted. by this tiny woman/child.  
  
He grabbed up the bullwhip and pushed the man who wielded it out of the way.  
  
"You'll stop....if I have to kill you...you'll do as I say!"  
  
And the whip fell across Artie's back. An while he felt the weight of the stroke, and felt the pole absorb the shock through him, it was Tyme who screamed until her mouth stood open but no sound would emerge. Over and over he beat Artie. The blood dripped in the dirt around his feet and Artie was horrified to see his blood falling on Tyme. She was wearing the blood she was feeling the pain for.   
  
Artie was growing weaker. Light headed. It was a strange sensation. Stranger still because as he grew weaker so did Tyme's cries. Maybe if he died...maybe the pain would stop for Tyme.  
  
Then she stirred at his feet, almost at the moment the thought passed through him and she rolled onto her back her fists clenched so tight that her nails dug into bloodied palms. Her eyes opened wide and even though Artemus Gordon couldn't see either pupil or iris in the green glow he knew she was looking up at him. She smiled.  
  
"Butch....and Sundance...." she breathed raggedly. Her chest rose and fell. Labored...in time with his.  
  
She knew....she knew it was a no win situation and she'd made her choice. Going out as a pair...no survivors if the other one wouldn't be coming out. Artie wanted to shake her, tell her to let go. But he didn't even make a sound. The fact is if he were in her place...he wouldn't have left her either.  
  
Artie closed his eyes. His dying wouldn't save Tyme. He knew now that they were linked in a way that once his body succumbed to the abuse it was taking...that she would be pulled into death by the chain of pain she'd forged.  
  
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It was there...the brief blinding flash of pain as he and Wolverine pulled themselves ashore and then everything was severed. The tug. the pull that he knew was Tyme's connection to him cut like a knife through a spider's web. Jim's eyes flew up the craggy rocks of the jutting fortress of California stone set deep in the impossible moat of San Francisco Bay and he pull it apart with his bare hands. He wanted to rage at the possibility that they fought so hard to have it end here.  
  
But he didn't. He met the idea with a cold rage...a rage he had only ever felt but one time. When he had "seen" Artie murdered by pistolaros and he had stalked his rage to a small Mexican town and watched the man who had done the deed die in his arms. If this severing was all he would have left of Tyme, if he had to face losing Artie again.... when he reached the prison then he would have revenge. And he didn't care if there would be anything left of him afterward...because it just wouldn't matter.  
  
While Wolverine was far less exhausted by the swim then he was...not to mention his incredible healing powers, James was doing a fair job of outdistancing the mutant wild man. Maybe it was his leaner frame, but he seemed more sure on the rocks then the man who seemed more built for crashing through them. He looked back briefly at a stony explosion behind him and smiled grimly.  
  
Wolverine was in full claw and was using them like a climber's pitons, using sheer muscle and determination to bury them into the rocky surface and drawing himself up until he was even with Jim's acrobatic display over the craggy landscape.  
  
"You got circus freak blood in ya cowboy?" he huffed. "Cuz you remind me of a blue elf I know."  
  
Jim didn't answer. He was glad that Logan wasn't fighting against him now...but he had no time to exchange quips. He had a feeling that the clawed man understood this because his climbing now matched Jim's and they both labored up the wall of stone, pulling each other along portions where needed, in determined silence.  
  
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Wolverine didn't want to ask West if he'd felt the sudden breaking that disconnected him from Tyme. He didn't have to. He watched the human's efforts to reach her...to reach his friend. and he knew that there was a rawness to his actions that was almost as messy as if he were bleeding all over the rocks they climbed.  
  
And that scared him. He had a feeling that West had a deeper connection to Tyme then his was...and that he might know something so terrible that Logan felt he wasn't ready for that berserker's rage to come over him again. Not now...not yet.  
  
Wolverine knew the rage would strike. Wolverine had lost friends before. And lovers. He wondered if West had ever lost both...or if he had ever lost them both on the same day. He really didn't want to see the boy scout hurt like that.   
  
Yeah...well he wasn't ever gonna be the guy's best bud, but West had his respect. And Wolverine would watch his back.  
  
Looking back across the bay as he climbed he wondered what would happen if he was stranded here. If Tyme didn't walk out of this...THIS...would be his new home. This time, if not the place.  
  
What then? How does a mutant with a bad temper and metal claws stay out of time's way? If the Prof. was right then chances were he'd see the X-Men again...someday. But he'd be much older. Maybe too old for....awww forget it you canucklehead, she'd still be Scott's girl and you'd be an old dog.  
  
He wished he had a smoke.  
  
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West drew a finger up to his lips and pointed above them and Wolverine looked up and nodded. Lacing his fingers Wolverine gave Jim a launching platform. Jim was jarred by just how far the mutant could toss him, but not as jarred as the guard on the battlement above who was downed by the flying left fist of the secret agent who caught the man's rifle before it hit the walkway. Signaling below he waited and looked around while Wolverine used his claws to scale the wall.  
  
Then across and down into the courtyard Jim saw it. The gathered guards. some of whom on the edges dropped their weapons and ran for the exits of the yard. Horrified by what they saw, but none tried to stop the crime being committed and for that James West vowed they'd all see jail cells. Or nooses.  
  
He heard the crack of the whip like a firecracker going off inside his brain and ran along the wall toward the stairs that led down to the yard below. At the top of the stairs he startled a burly guard who lunged at him with his bayonet. Jim caught the barrel of his rifle with his forearms and twisted, flipping the gun butt end up into the man's chin and then caught the gun in his hands and used it as a club to knock the unsteady man off the steps and out of his way. As he ran down the steps he heard a groan and jumped aside as the broken body of another guard rolled down the steps past him.   
  
"Wait for me Bub!" shouted Wolverine who leapt the steps three at a time.  
  
They ran toward the pole in the center of the courtyard like it was a beacon and started beating their way through the crowd of guards watching the Roman circus before them. Jim flung aside mostly unresisting men...some who took swings at him, if they woke up, would regret it.   
  
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Tyme felt everything and nothing. Her head buzzed and through the green haze she kept her narrowing vision fixed on Artemus Gordon's face. Her body seemed to be beyond responding to the pain she siphoned away from Gordon's abused body. She imagined that he, they, were probably close to shutting down. But she was amazed by how much punishment he could take despite being human. Funny she could think such a thing at a time like this. It wasn't hard though, for her mind to wander even while she did what she did. She imagined that Charl....the Professor...would be proud of what she had developed into as a mutant. She regretted not being able to tell him. She regretted also leaving Logan here. With her and Artemus dead she imagined...she hoped...they would turn to each other for comfort, maybe even friendship.  
  
But she mostly regretted not seeing Jim again, not being held in his arms, not being able to tell him how much she loved him. She could almost imagine, if she tried hard enough, that she could hear his voice.   
  
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Wolverine saw Jim reach the pole and cut the rope holding Gordon standing. He watched West lower him to the ground as his friend's bloodstained his skin. Then he saw West lift Tyme into his lap and saw him shout at her, shake her. Oh God.  
  
Then as most of the guards fell back, or ran now that the jig was up, Wolverine saw a tall, bent, stalking figure emerge from the confusion. He didn't need to be an empath to know what this man was going to do.  
  
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Artemus Gordon felt his bunched muscles relax as he was lowered to the ground. He opened his eyes and felt his gag pulled away from his mouth. But before he could find his voice he saw Jim's back as he focused on Tyme. Her body lay across his lap. Still. Artie turned his eyes outward at the blurring circle of blue that were the guards' backs and his eyes widened. Hillmont held a gun and was pointing it at the back of Jim's head.  
  
Artie opened his mouth to sound the alarm when Hillmont stopped and the side of his mouth went slack as a thin line of blood ran from his thin lips. The doctor looked down and the gun tumbled from his hand as he tried to grasp one of the three blades that protruded from his chest. A finger was severed as the knives retreated from him and his eyes rolled up and he fell forward almost landing on Artie but he was caught and tossed aside as Wolverine stepped into the now unoccupied space, the wounds in between his knuckles sealing magically as he sheathed his weapons.  
  
The big mutant grabbed one of the guards and ripped the guy's coat off his back and he knelt beside Artie and covered his raw and bleeding back and helped prop him up so he wouldn't be laying on it.  
  
Artie found his voice and it was as raw as his back. "Make her give back my pain...please...it's killing her."  
  
Wolverine's eyes narrowed. "What? What...she's somehow feeling your pain...with you."  
  
Artie shook his head. "Instead of me!"   
  
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Jim touched the top of Tyme's bald head and brushed the sweaty dust from her head and looked for the injury that had her close to death, but saw nothing.  
  
Then he heard Artie talking to Wolverine and he understood. She had done something to keep Artie from feeling the pain when he was being beaten. That the severing of their connection had probably been to protect him as well. But he looked at how weak Artie was and he looked at Tyme and he shook his head.  
  
"Tyme knows what she's doing...I think. If she let's the pain go, the shock will kill you."  
  
Wolverine reached out and grabbed a flash of dusty white and Jim recognized a young army doctor...a captain. No doubt one of the men assisting the monster who was in charge.  
  
While Wolverine allowed a claw to menacingly escape his closed fist in front of the man's face Jim explained exactly where they needed to go and what the doctor would do if he knew what was healthy for him. The red haired man's head bobbed and Wolverine gathered up Artie and Jim lifted Tyme and they ran for the prison infirmary.  
  
Artie's wounds had to be cleaned and dressed quickly and fluids were given to him as quickly as could be managed. Then the young captain gave Artie a syringe full of morphine, upping the dosage until Tyme's breathing steadied.  
  
Lifting Tyme's eyelid the doctor noted that the glowing had subsided and that both patients would probably survive.  
  
Jim watched Logan "explain" to the doctor that all of this was a dream and that if he talked he'd carve him like a student cadaver. The young man nodded his understanding and promptly wet himself.  
  
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Logan was impressed with the chewing out West gave to his superior officer Col. Richmond.  
  
The seething, scathing, pugnacious report made Logan lean against the wall with his arms crossed over his broad chest and smile around the smoking stub of a cigar in his mouth.  
  
Richmond's indignant, chagrined response was as much of an apology as one could hope for no matter what the era from a government official. They disavowed any knowledge of Dr. Hillmont's intended actions (ala: a bad episode of Mission Impossible). And any and all of Hillmont's handpicked soldiers who actively participated in the kidnapping and torture of Artemus Gordon, ("And were still alive." thought Wolverine with a bigger smile), would be court-martialed and imprisoned and the cowards who ran busted down in rank and given some less then choice postings. As to Tyme and Logan's situation...the Colonel eyed the big cunuck suspiciously. He'd heard more then a dozen reports of the final battle and he'd seen the injuries...and the mortal wounds and his eyes wandered to a close scrutiny of Logan's hands.  
  
Let him look. Logan plucked the stub from his mouth and smiled to show his teeth. Which almost always had more of an effect of seeing a wolf bare it's teeth then as a show of humor.  
  
"Ya want something....Bub?"  
  
The Colonel shook his head quickly and Logan saw James West grin behind the man's back and lower his head to regain the rage he'd been nursing since Artie and Tyme were seen by a respectable doctor and surgeon three weeks earlier.  
  
Instead Col. Richmond handed James West a packet of papers and excused himself, skirting Wolverine as he walked out the Wanderer's door.  
  
He picked up the whiskey bottle off the bar and poured a drink for himself and one for West who retrieved it without a sound.  
  
West tossed aside the papers and sat down heavily.  
  
"It's almost time for us to go." Logan said.  
  
"And Artie and I have a new assignment. We leave in two days." West drank his drink and Logan passed him the bottle for a refill.  
  
"Tyme told me she could feel the pull back...strong. I think she's been fighting it." Logan took a drag on what was left of the stub and put the rest out in his palm with a satisfying wince.  
  
West threw his glass into the wall and it exploded with the impact in an equally satisfying way.  
  
"We both have." Then he got up and walked out, purposefully picking up the thinly padded gloves on the desk and headed toward the barn. Stress relief, thought Logan....good idea.  
  
He followed.  
  
When he got there he saw West taking some vicious stabs at the hanging bag.  
  
"Need a sparring partner?" He asked.  
  
The agent looked at him curiously. Then shook his head.  
  
"I think I need to get back to work." He smiled sadly.   
  
Logan turned to go.  
  
"Logan....tell me something." Logan stopped, jarred to hear his name...curious.  
  
"What?"  
  
"How does she live? What kind of people will be there for her...besides you?" He looked at Logan with his piercingly direct gaze. "Is this...is love...any easier with her own kind?"  
  
Logan kicked at the straw and fell back heavily against the wall and looked up at the ceiling then back down at West with a sad shaking of his head.  
  
"Bub...she'll make it. She's gotten so damn strong. Stronger then I ever thought she'd become. But if she never falls in love...or blows it over and over and over, then she'll be no different then any other mutant at that school...or anywhere else. But at least, I think, she finished running away from her feelings. She's ready to join the rest of the mutant race. The rest of the human race."  
  
"If you treat her bad....I'll haunt you."  
  
Logan laughed. "Anything but that Bub!"  
  
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Jim laughed too.  
  
Comforted slightly. Hurting terribly. The mission Col. Richmond had given him was the signal. And Jim felt guilty that he was actually relieved. When things got tough...the war...his parents death....the day his sister died...he threw himself into his work, study, even...play, just that much harder. And the hurt would lessen. But would it work on love? He knew it was time to find out.  
  
Almost as if summoned, Artie and Tyme came through the door holding hands and laughing. Tyme's hair was a pale peachy fuzz covered by a bonnet, but to Jim she looked more beautiful then he could imagine.  
  
Tyme smiled at Jim and Logan, but her eyes flashed brightly and her smile became melancholy.  
  
"Butch bought me a nice hat to keep the sun off my noggin." She tried to sound upbeat. "Logan. do you think the Professor will think I'm making fun of him?"  
  
"Naw baby....just let him wear the hat every once in a while." Smiled Logan. Then looking back at Jim. "I need to get some things done...before..."  
  
Jim nodded.  
  
Artie didn't need to be drawn a diagram. He leaned in and kissed Tyme's cheek. "See you in a bit Sundance." Jim didn't miss him squeezing her hand...and throwing him an almost warning look. But Jim noted a sympathetic glint to it and grinned at his old friend reassuringly.  
  
"Butch? Sundance?" he said as he approached her.  
  
"Artie will tell you later..." she said stepping into the circle of his embrace. "When we're gone."  
  
"We have an assignment." He tried to sound casual.  
  
"And I can't hold out here much longer."  
  
"Yes." He pulled her in closer.  
  
She fumbled with the folds of the dress she'd worn into town and brought out a small frame with a closed front. She handed it to him.   
  
"Artie found me a very nice wig...almost my hair...anyway. It looked good for the photo."  
  
He opened it and Tyme's face beamed back at him with calm, quiet, peaceful love from the picture. Her eyes were catching the flash of the powder and seemed particularly bright. shiny. She looked beautiful.  
  
"Don't worry...I stole a pic of you and Artie already...so this is to replace it."  
  
"Its beautiful...except..." Jim smiled.  
  
Tyme lifted her small hand and brushed her knuckles against his temple softly. Her eyes flared.  
  
Then she giggled. "I'm too covered up?"  
  
He reached around behind her and began to unbutton her gown.  
  
She smiled. "You have a filthy mind Agent West."  
  
"Now, now, now...I've seen yours too...." He smiled.  
  
She unbuckled the top of his pants.  
  
"So you have...so you have."  
  
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Laying in each other's arms Tyme knew that good bye should be coming. She had planned on saying something more to Jim...but she didn't want to break the spell. As far as partings go...they were doing a good job at not falling apart around each other. She remembered her parting from a younger Charlie. Sick, young, weak, crying. Begging for a way to stay...wrenching sadness.  
  
She loved Jim more then she could ever have imagined with Charles Xavier...but...this was almost serene.  
  
How did she come to this point?  
  
From the blind grief of losing someone...to feeling okay with it?  
  
Then she knew...it wasn't goodbye.  
  
"Jim...promise me something." Jim turned on his side and touched her shoulder, her neck.   
  
"What?"  
  
"Keep a diary." Jim looked slightly unnerved by that...she smiled. "Not of feelings silly. Places you've been..dates..times. Keep that kind of a diary. Keep it stored safely...and someday...put it in a bank vault and bequeath it to the Xavier School."  
  
Jim's eyes dawned with a confused understanding.  
  
"But you said you can't control WHERE in time you go." Jim looked at her expectantly.  
  
"Not yet I can't." She grinned. "But since my powers have grown I've done a helluva lot of things I couldn't before."  
  
Jim shook his head with awe. "You think? You think you can....?"  
  
"James West...I love you. And this is not goodbye."  
  
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Rogue bounced around nervously outside the school's hospital doors. "Are they all right Jean?"   
She tried to crane her head around the tall red head but was gently pushed back.  
  
"They are tired...it was a hard time but they'll be fine." She reassured the anxious teen. Then looking over at Professor Charles Xavier. "Tyme wants to see you."  
  
Charles Xavier rolled into the pink colored room and smiled at Tyme where she lay propped up in her bed. Logan sat next to her and cheerfully ignored the no smoking sign as he puffed on a fairly large, obnoxious cigar.  
  
Dr Henry McCoy stepped up next to the bed and pulled back the blankets slightly to look at his patients one more time.  
  
Tyme smiled. "Charles Xavier...please meet James Logan and Artemis Charlene West."  
  
Logan's chest puffed out just a bit more and he handed Xavier an equally large cigar.  
  
Xavier reached a finger into the folds of the blankets and felt gently into the simple, complicated, wonderfully innocent minds of creatures so new. "Welcome to the Xavier Institute little ones."  
  
Tyme smiled at him. He was happy to see her...happy that she could bring him back into her life without the pain there was before. Their ordeal had been terrible. But the fruit it bore....  
  
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James West looked at Artie with shock. "YOU KNEW!?"  
  
"She made me promise Jim...after you left."  
  
James West sat down as his friend poured him a drink. Tyme and Logan had "hopped" out of their lives just 3 hours earlier. Taking the drink Jim turned Tyme's portrait over.   
  
"I'm going to have a baby." It read in a clear strong hand.  
  
Jim held his drink up and Artie did as well. "No goodbyes!" he toasted. 


End file.
